HECM endorsements started the year slowly, but Retail/direct volume suffered disproportionately (dropping -3.7%) while Wholesale/brokers actually gained ground, rising 2% in the month. That’s mildly interesting given the lag time for endorsements, but case numbers issued in January rose to their highest level since October in a much more important signal that reverse is looking up!
- Overall, case numbers rose 28.7% to 2,923
- Equity Takeout cases issued (new reverses that are neither purchase nor refinances) jumped 23.5% to 2,414
- Purchase (H4P) gained 13.4% in a seasonally bad month to 135
- H2H refinance case numbers showed the ongoing alignment of reverse to 10 year CMT rate nuances, rocketing 87.9% to 374. There are loans to be done here but keep in mind that with how low volume has been the past 2 years at the higher expected rates, this isn’t something to build your business around!
We also saw 4 of the top 10 lenders growing:
- Goodlife gained 25% to 50 loans
- Fairway bounced back 21.6% into triple digits at 107 loans
- FAR rose a solid 17.4%, gaining 101 loans (equivalent to the 12 month pace of the #6 lender!) to 682 loans
- Longbridge increased 4.7% to 358 loans
Check out the full rankings on pages 3 and 4 of the full report below by clicking on the image.
