Reverse Mortgage Wholesale Vol Up, As Expected

Reverse Mortgage Daily came out with a story yesterday about wholesale volume for reverse mortgage products up by 9.3% and more brokers getting involved in this business. According to the publication:

"Wholesale endorsements totaled 2,413 units in January, a near 10% increase over the previous month, but still down 45.8% from January 2010. Retail endorsements lost 6.8% month-over-month, totaling 4,049, but gained 27.7% from last year, according to [Reverse Market Insight (RMI)].”

Readers of this blog heard about that here some time ago. I mean “heard” because it’s in my 2011 projections podcast you’ll find here.

We began talking to lenders who were interested in securing loan origination technology that could be used in the wholesale channel for reverse mortgages last year and it doesn’t surprise me at all to see that more of them are using it.

Photo Credit: www.flickr.com/photos/bravenewtraveler/

Like most mortgage products, reverse mortgages are complicated and they require some skill to originate. While younger home buyers may be comfortable with walking into a branch and working with a loan officer they don’t know or even originating their own loan online one day, older Americans that qualify for reverse mortgages are not going to do those things. They’ll continue to work with people they know and trust and that means local folks, like mortgage brokers.

Lenders that want to capitalize on this trend will continue to invest in tech that will allow them to empower brokers to reach out to these prospects and close the deals.