More than half of respondents, at 51%, believe the emergence of more regulations will be a critical issue facing the mortgage industry.

Working with a committed and financially stable mortgage lender (29%) was voted the second biggest challenge, followed by product flexibility (12%) and rising interest rate environment (8%).

Correspondent mortgage bankers were voted as the best type of company structure to support originators who get their own leads from business partners or referrals, garnering 56% of the vote, followed by federally chartered or bank-backed institutions (28%).

When asked what size institution constitutes the “best fit” for originators, 47% picked a regional mortgage banker, nearly twice the number of those who picked a large national mortgage banker (27%).

Almost half of those polled are only licensed in one state (46%), but 31% have licensing in multiple states, 9% are working towards getting more licenses, and 14% aren’t interested in getting licensed at all.

The Hammerhouse survey also asks questions relating to what keeps originators with their employers, areas they’d like to see strengthened within their companies, and what would most motivate them to join a new firm.

View the full survey (and results) here.

Written by Alyssa Gerace

For the third straight quarter, risk managers don’t seem to expect delinquency rates for mortgages, home equity lines, credit cards, auto loans, small business loans, and student loans to improve any time soon, according to PRMIA.

Nearly half, at 47.1%, believe that mortgage delinquencies will increase, either somewhat or significantly—slightly more than was predicted during the previous quarter’s survey. Additionally, slightly more think that home equity line delinquencies will increase, at 44.3% in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to 40% last quarter.

“Overall, delinquency predictions paint a somewhat pessimistic picture,” the report says. “Risk managers continue to express concern that delinquency rates are high and likely to grow higher.”

Looking ahead, while nearly one third of respondents think it’s “likely” that the U.S. will have negative GDP growth in 2012, more than half (51.7%) think it’s “unlikely.” And a little less than half (45.7%) think that the influence of Chinese consumers will surpass U.S. consumer influence within the next decade, compared to 19.5% who think this will happen sooner, within the next five years.

Written by Alyssa Gerace

Lender consolidation has been one of the biggest trends in the past three years, and the declining loan volume is proportional to the decreasing number of lenders. Whether or not having less lenders is good or bad for the industry hasn’t been proven, says RMI, but one thing’s clear: “lower active lender totals march in lock-step with lower loan volume.”

In the past few years, endorsements have gone down—and so has the number of active lenders.

Source: Reverse Market Insight, HECM Trends

“What’s striking about the chart is just how correlated the two trends have been,” says the newsletter, going on to note that when the Federal Housing Administration switched from approved brokers to TPOs approved by lenders (which accounts for the gap between the red and blue lines on the chart), “HECM volumes stayed in line with the red line that includes TPOs. This would suggest that the active originators metric including TPOs is more representative of the health of the industry.”

Regionally in terms of endorsement growth, much of the “Sunbelt” and West Coast are trending warm. Out of the top-ten states for endorsement volume, only four have positive year-to-date growth, with Pennsylvania and North Carolina posting double-digit gains. Volume in Florida (#3), Maryland (#8) and tenth-ranked Illinois continues to ebb, however, with all three experiencing declines of more than 21%.

View the newsletter here.

Written by Alyssa Gerace

In the third quarter of 2011, senior home equity went up 1.5% to 152.0, for a total of $3.19 trillion of available home equity, the NRMLA/RMMI report says.

“This data further demonstrates that the home must be considered as part of the funding longevity equation.  Reverse mortgages are a creative tool to help seniors better use the assets they have to safely fund retirement,” said Peter Bell, President and CEO of NRMLA, in a statement.

In the third quarter, housing prices in nearly 70% of the 295 metropolitan statistical areas tracked by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and RiskSpan posted positive quarter-over-quarter growth, nudging aggregate senior housing values up 1% to $4.2 trillion, according to NRMLA.

Meanwhile, senior mortgage debt levels fell for the 10th quarter in a row, standing at $1.02 trillion and leaving seniors with $3.19 trillion in equity.

“The home is, by far, the largest financial asset most families have for use in retirement,” Bell said. “Reverse mortgages have evolved from a circumstance-based product to an accepted forward looking tool used for financial planning.”

Written by Alyssa Gerace

With Wells Fargo’s presence growing ever fainter, HECM retail endorsements dipped 11.8% in November, but total endorsements stayed steady with a 0.2% growth thanks to wholesale endorsements shooting up 22.7%. This “stunning disparity,” says RMI, “brought wholesale/third-part originator share of the total market to the highest level in over a year at 42.5%.”

Source: Reverse Market Insights, HECM Originators

Although October’s breakdown between wholesale and retail was somewhat unexpected, as wholesale volume actually declined more than retail, November’s numbers brought the industry “full circle as the second half of Wells volume decline saw wholesale/TPO rise to the challenge of replacing the former market leader,” says RMI.

November was a good month for most of the top lenders, too, as all but two of the eight largest active lenders (not considering Wells Fargo and Bank of America) showed gains, according to the report.

Only One Reverse Mortgage and Security One Lending saw their volume drop, while MetLife’s endorsements went up nearly 41% in the month, followed by Genworth Financial’s nearly 39% increase.

Outside of the top ten, reverse mortgage lenders like Money House, iReverse, and Cherry Creek posted triple-digit gains.

View the November HECM Originators newsletter here.

Written by Alyssa Gerace

Home equity conversion mortgage endorsements decreased 0.4% from November to 4,636, according to RMI data, and although active lenders increased 4.4%, it’s still a low level of competition since stabilizing earlier this year, the newsletter says.

“We’ve been saying that fewer competitors yields benefits for surviving lenders for at least a year, and Metlife provided a poignant demonstration of this effect,” says RMI. “The company’s November and December totals were its two highest endorsement figures of the year, with each month higher than the low months for Wells Fargo before their exit announcement in June.”

Wells Fargo for its part saw what’s likely to be one last upswing in endorsement volume with 70 loans, up from 24 in November.

Along with Wells Fargo and MetLife, One Reverse Mortgage LLC, Urban Financial, and Security One also saw their endorsements increase from November, although volume for Generation Mortgage, Genworth Financial, and American Advisors Group was down by an average of 53 loans.

Regionally, half of the regions tracked by RMI saw higher volume, including Southeast/Caribbean and Pacific/Hawaii, although national volume fell 5.6%.

Although the exits of the two biggest reverse mortgage lenders dealt a blow to the industry, a majority of top lenders appear to have surged in both their endorsement volume and market share in 2011, according to RMI’s report.

Besides Wells and Bank of America, seven out of the top ten reverse mortgage lenders saw volume significantly increase in 2011 compared to the previous year, with AAG, MetLife, and Generation Mortgage seeing triple-digit gains. In terms of market share, AAG saw an increase of 192%, trailed slightly by MetLife’s 187%, with Generation posting a 130% gain.

With two dominant banks fading out of the picture, the remaining top lenders stand to continue gaining steam—including market share and volume—in 2012.

View the HECM Lenders newsletter here.

Written by Alyssa Gerace

The most recent Census data finds that there were 40.3 million people who were 65 years or older as of April 2010, up 15% from 35 million a decade earlier. As of April 2010, that population represented 13% of the overall population in the United States.

The aging of the baby boom bulge is “unprecedented,” said Carrie Werner, statistician, Age and Special Populations Branch, Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, in a call with members of the press Wednesday.

Of older Americans, the 85- to 94-year-old age group showed the greatest increase at near 30%.

Regionally, the Census shows that the South contains the greatest number of people 65 and older, but the percentage of those who are 65+ in the Northeast is greater than in any other region. Of 21 counties that saw their 65+ populations double over the past decade, five were located in Colorado, five in Georgia and five were in Texas. Additionally, the older population is more likely to live inside a metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area.

Written by Elizabeth Ecker

For each loan originated in the quarter, there was an average profit of $1,263, compared to $575 in the second quarter of 2011, according to the MBA’s data, and average production volume jumped 36.2% to $237 million (or 1,114 loans per company) from $174 million (or 866 loans).

“Higher volume helped profitability as production costs were spread over a greater number of loans,” said Marina Walsh, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Industry Analysis, in a statement.  ”Third quarter production expenses dropped on a per-loan basis as volume rose, although expenses remained high by historical standards when compared to other quarters with similar volume.”

The average production profit in basis points also more than doubled, from 32.86 in the second quarter to 66.37 in the third quarter.

“This was the most favorable quarterly results in production since the refinancing wave in the third quarter of 2010, when net profits were 71.46 basis points,” said the MBA.

Secondary market gains in basis points also increased, to 229 basis points from 210 in the last quarter.

Refinances made up 45% of total originations, in dollar volume, compared to 36% in the second quarter.

Written by Alyssa Gerace