Wholesale reverse mortgage lending continued to outperform retail lending in February, according to data complied by Reverse Market Insight.
Wholesale endorsement growth posted a 16.2% gain in February to 2,805 units, in contrast to just a 0.6% gain for retail endorsements, landing at 4,075 units during the same time period. The trend continues, following wholesale growth in January.
Source: Reverse Market Insight
“Of course we don’t really expect brokers to gain back all the ground they’ve lost in the past year given all the regulatory headwinds, but they’re not dead yet despite the many obituaries already written,” said RMI in a report accompanying the data. “We also suspect given the relative weakness in top 10 lenders retail business in March that we’ll probably see brokers make it a clean sweep of growth for the quarter when we see next month’s Wholesale Leaders report.”
Of all February endorsements, 40.8% were attributed to brokers. The broker share is still down from last year, but has risen substantially from 33.7% in December, RMI reports.
The Top 5 wholesale lenders, according to RMI’s data were MetLife; Urban Financial; Bank of America; Generation Mortgage; and Genworth Financial, with Urban Financial being the only Top 10 wholesale lender to growth its broker/wholesale business in the past 12 months. RMI called the growth a “tall order, given the declines wholesale has seen over that same span.”
See RMI’s wholesale leaders report for February.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
