November HECM endorsements totaled 4,654, up 1 loan from last month. The lack of change in industry overall volume is remarkable considering the second shoe dropped on Wells Fargo’s expected volume decline. Last month we were very worried about the Wells volume decline given that last months’ drop was accompanied by a drop in aggregate volume among all other lenders.
This month the other lenders entirely picked up the slack, suggesting that our initial guess that half of Wells’ volume might migrate to other lenders (rather than disappearing completely) could play out after all. Part of that offset came from an additional 14 lenders showing up in the rankings compared to October (5.9% increase) who contributed 59 loans after netting out the October lenders that fell out in November.
The headline story of the month is undoubtedly the industry taking the Wells decline in stride, and the disparate lender performances are mirrored in the geographic perspective. Several regions saw significant changes from last month:
- On the downside, Northwest/Alaska, Pacific/Hawaii and Midwest all saw double digit percentage declines of -24.1%, -14.5% and -12.4%, respectively
- Rocky Mountain bounced back up 50% from a dramatic drop in October
- Southwest and New York/New Jersey also put in good performances, up 19.1% and 10.5%
Click on the image below for this month’s report.
