While national reverse mortgage volume is down year over year and monthly data also shows a recent decline, some regions are seeing a serious uptick in interest from new borrowers. For some hard-hit regions, it is a needed recovery, but for others, volumes are nearing their all-time highs.

The “silver lining” can be seen in a few targeted regions, wrote Reverse Market Insight in a report this week. Frontrunners for growth Miami, Florida and Riverside, California indicated a trend, RMI found, as regions that were hard hit by the housing bust seem to be making a comeback for volume. But others have fared better.

“After looking at the top five counties in several states, a pattern started to emerge,” RMI writes. “After several years of seeing states and counties with lower volume catching up with their leading peers, it seems that in several cases historical leaders are re-emerging as growth areas thus far in 2012.”

RMI data shows several other strong areas for growth including New York’s Suffolk and Nassau counties, which saw their highest volumes in two years, within “shouting distance” of all-times highs in 2009.

While the New York counties come close to historic highs, hard-hit areas like Miami are growing, but are no where near where they were in the boom times.

In California, RMI also found Los Angeles and San Diego were on the upswing, noting that the performance of the coastal counties should be an indicator of what is to come across the state.

View the RMI report.

Written by Elizabeth Ecker