Reverse mortgage retail volume continues to outperform the wholesale/broker industry, showing a 12.2% increase in May for the retail side, while wholesale/broker volume saw just a 2% rise, the latest Reverse Market Insight (RMI) report shows.
Total home equity conversion mortgage (HECM) endorsement growth increased 7.8% in May.
Previously, retail showed a 0.2% gain in April, but the meager increase far outpaced wholesale’s 19.9% decrease in volume.
This outperformance has been fairly consistent throughout the past several years, says RMI President John K. Lunde.
“Retail has done better than wholesale over the past several years as regulations and costs increased for the business, which seems to reduce the capability for small brokers to thrive as independent companies,” he told RMD. “May fits within that context and doesn’t break new ground beyond what we’ve seen in the past, reaching up to the low 60s as [percentage] of total volume.”
Retail holds 59% of industry volume, just short of the 61% reached in September and December last year.
American Advisors Group continues to lead the pack in retail and wholesale volume, with a new high of 1,481 loans, up 17.7% from April. RMS/Security One Lending rebounded with a 24.8% increase to 392 loans, and Proficio Mortgage rose 23.3% “to recover some of the losses from the past three months,” RMI notes in a newsletter on the report.
View the latest Reverse Market Insight data.
Written by Emily Study
