In case you missed it…here’s what happened in reverse mortgage news this week.
Security One announced it has joined forces with broker roll-up National Premier Home Equity. S1L has teamed up with the fledgling broker roll-up that launched earlier this year under the leadership of former Financial Freedom president Bart Johnson and Tony Garcia, CEO of Liberty Street Financial.
The housing market presented mixed signals. Reports from the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as online real estate resource Zillow indicated that while home prices increased just slightly in July, year-over-year prices are still under continued strain.
RMS announced efforts to ramp up its origination channel. In an effort to fully round out its product and service offerings, Spring, Texas-based Reverse Mortgage Solutions it boosting origination efforts and will begin developing lending partners to originate loans across the board in all channels of reverse mortgages.
U.S. debt was downgraded and market turmoil ensued. The HMBS market, however, saw little negative impact and actually could stand to fare well relative to uncertainty in other markets across the globe.
The ratio of retail-to-wholesale settled into a “new normal” of 60%-to-40%. A Reverse Market Insight report indicated that compared with 2009’s retail average of 47%, the numbers seem to be stabilizing at a much higher retail proportion of 60%.
…and we announced the winners of the first-ever RMD Awards. After tallying more than 15,000 votes, the winners have been chosen. Visit the RMD Awards site to check out the list of winners in each of nine categories from best reverse mortgage celebrity spokesman to best wholesale lender.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
