After sinking to a 16-month low, the origination of government-insured reverse mortgages rose to the highest level in five months.
During the month of February, there were 4,579 home-equity conversion mortgages that were endorsed by the Federal Housing Administration.
The production data was reported by Reverse Market Insight.
The last time that FHA mortgagees generated that many HECM endorsements was in September of last year, when the total came in at 4,671, according to historical data.
In the first month of this year, FHA endorsements totaled 3,890 —
the slowest month since September 2014.
The latest activity was lower, however, than in February
2015, when FHA endorsed 4,747 HECMs.
Endorsements during the first-two months of this year amounted to
8,469 HECMs, while the total was 21,057 endorsements since FHA started its fiscal-year 2016 on Oct. 1, 2015.
Last month’s HECM endorsements were originated by 295 mortgagees, more than the 289 as of February 2015.
The biggest originator in February 2016 was American Advisors Group, where volume increased to 917 HECMs from the previous month’s 826.
Next was Liberty Home Equity Solutions Inc., which pumped up production to 490 reverse mortgages from 291 in January.
At 406 endorsements in February, No. 3 RMS/Security One Lending originated more than 356 a month earlier.
After that was Finance of America Reverse LLC with 368 endorsements, climbing from 323 in January.
Fifth in line last month was One Reverse Mortgage LLC with 330 HECMs endorsed last month versus 287 in the previous report.
