February 2025 Top 100 HECM Lenders Report

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View Annual Historical HECM Endorsements

HECMWorld Endorsement Commentary

By James E Veale, CPA, MBT
HECMWorld Data Analyst

The total HECM endorsements for the month was 2,481, and through the first five months of this fiscal year, 12,547. Unfortunately, HUD has not publicly released:

Any breakdown of the monthly endorsement totals.
An update on the endorsed HECM portfolios (MMI and GI&SRI Funds).
Any case number assignment data can be found in monthly FHA Production Reports. The last posted production report was for dOctober 2024. After withdrawing the FHA Production Report for October 2024 and not disclosing its current status, there could be changes coming to the data that we have reported on.

While the total HECM endorsements for February 2025 are down by 6.1% from the total HECM endorsements for January 2025, it is up 30.1% over that same total for February 2024 (one year ago).

The total HECM endorsements through the first five months of this fiscal year is up 12.4% over that same total last fiscal year.

While the month-over-month total is not encouraging, the other comparisons are somewhat encouraging. On a monthly average basis, this fiscal year is on course to once again have a fiscal year HECM endorsement total exceeding 30,000. Yet the total for this fiscal year to date is 3.8% lower than that same total for fiscal year 2019, the second-worst fiscal year for HECM endorsements since 10/1/2003.

Based solely on this early endorsement data, the current pace of HECM endorsements per month could mean that total HECM endorsements for the fiscal year 2025 could replace fiscal year 2019 as the second-worst fiscal year since the fiscal year 2003. Yet, with no recent data on case number assignments, the current year-to-date trend could be misleading.

With the current employment situation at HUD, FHA, and GNMA, no one can estimate how soon “normal” HECM data posting will return. Perhaps even worse is not knowing when HMBS 2.0 will be brought online.

Have a prosperous and profitable month.