Reverse mortgage endorsements continued their mid-year slowdown in June, with the regional data painting a particularly disheartening picture.
Federal Housing Administration-approved lenders saw an endorsement dip of 0.4% in June, turning in 4,837 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages according to the latest report from Reverse Market Insight, Inc. Those numbers remain unsurprising given the trends over the past few months, as growth slowed following a torrid winter, but the Dana Point, Calif.-based research firm expressed some concern about the region-by-region numbers.
“That’s neutral at best on the face of it, but it’s surprising that just one of the nine regions grew in June,” RMI noted in its analysis.
The lucky winner was the Pacific/Hawaii region, which saw a gain of 113 loans from May to June. All eight other regions had downward-pointing red arrows, including just 77 loans for the Great Plains — down from 95 in May, or a drop of 18.9%.
The top 10 lenders, meanwhile, saw endorsements grow just a little bit, with 1.5% higher volume according to RMI. The leaderboard itself remained relatively steady, with American Advisors Group leading the pack by more than doubling the total for second-place Finance of America Reverse; however, RMI pointed out that FAR saw impressive month-to-month growth by increasing endorsements 52.9%.
There had long been signs that high endorsement growth levels earlier in the year were poised to decline, including a lack of corresponding increases in counseling demand or case assignment numbers. But total monthly endorsement volume remains higher than at the same point in 2016, according to RMI’s year-to-year tracking chart.
Check out RMI’s full set of data here.
Written by Alex Spanko
