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| Quarterly and monthly reverse mortgage volume increased, with some lenders capturing more of the growth than others. One player has seen its market share drop by more than 10 percent.During the first quarter, 30,203 home-equity conversion mortgages were endorsed, according to Reverse Market Insight. Volume increased from 27,656 in the fourth quarter.
Included in the latest quarter were 14,630 retail endorsements, up from the fourth quarter’s 12,874. Wholesale endorsements rose to 15,573 from 14,782. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., was the biggest reverse lender during the first quarter, with 5,985 endorsements, the newsletter said. Next was Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corp., which had 5,238 in volume. Market share at the OneWest Bank FSB subsidiary has fallen from around 26 percent in July 2008 to just 15 percent in March. After that was Bank of America, N.A., where 4,536 loans were endorsed in the fourth quarter. No. 4 James B. Nutter & Co. saw 4,368 reverse mortgages endorsed, and No. 5 MetLife Bank had 2,307 endorsements. Reverse mortgage endorsements during just March were 11,260, rising from 9,084 in February and 9,560 in April 2008. The monthly increase was driven by a one-third improvement from February in retail volume to 5,750. March HECM endorsements by wholesale lenders also improved — by 15 percent to 5,510. Wells was also the No. 1 lender in March, with 2,371 units, followed by BoA, at 1,846, and Financial Freedom, which had 1,600 endorsements. Next was Nutter, where 1,380 loans were endorsed, and MetLife, at 741. The fastest growing retail reverse lender was BoA, which saw its reverse volume for the 12 months ended March 31 shoot up by 6,475. On the wholesale side, Nutter had the highest level of growth: 7,261. |
