Wholesale reverse mortgage production has fallen by more than half over the past year, while retail fundings are down 40 percent. During just the past six months that ended in May, four reverse mortgage firms have held the title of biggest wholesale lender. On the retail side, however, the title has never changed.
The biggest reverse mortgage lender, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., closed 1,065 retail and wholesale units during May, falling from 1,279 the month before. The findings were reported in the newsletter Reverse Market Insights.
But No. 2 Bank of America, N.A., eaked out a gain — rising to 891 home-equity conversion mortgages from April’s 883.
MetLife Bank followed, declining to 574 reverse mortgages closed in May from 710. Urban Financial Group tumbled to 460 from 792, and No. 5 Generation Mortgage Co. retreated to 388 HECMs from 397 in April.
May’s overall HECM production included 2,086 wholesale HECMs. Third-party originations dropped from April’s 2,813 and May 2009’s 4,275.
May’s biggest reverse mortgage wholesaler was MetLife, where third parties originated 371 loans. MetLife’s wholesale production the prior month was 530 units.
But MetLife’s title is likely to be short-lived; since December 2009, the No. 1 spot has also been held by BofA, Generation Mortgage and Urban Financial.
In May, BofA was No. 2 with wholesale business coming in at 349 compared to April’s 418.
No. 3 Urban Financial — April’s biggest wholesaler — saw third-party production drop to 337 loans from 586, and Generation Mortgage followed with business edging down to 317 loans from 336. The wholesale lender with the title of No. 5 was Genworth, where volume rose to 105 from 97.
Retail reverse production during May was 2,465 loans, falling from 2,692 the prior month and 4,077 the prior year.
Between October 2009 and April 2010, Wells was the only retail reverse lender to exceed 1,000 loans during any given month. In addition, based on the oldest available data going back to April 2008, Wells has closed more retail loans every month than any other reverse retailer.
