March HECM bump masks a deeper slowdown

Endorsements of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages surged noticeably last month from a short February, but volumes are still showing weakness compared to second-half 2025 levels.  

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HECM endorsements increased 16.3% month over month in March to 2,117 loans, according to the latest data from Reverse Market Insight. While welcome news for lenders of the product, monthly numbers from the last two months are still at the slowest pace since last summer. February volume came out to 1,821 loans. 

Compared to one year earlier when endorsements totaled 2,128, March’s numbers came closer to par, inching down by just 0.5% year over year.

Recent downward HECM trends do not necessarily point to lack of interest in reverse products, though, RMI said. 

“What we can piece together looks like the growth in unit volume has been almost entirely in the proprietary products for several years, particularly when we exclude the HECM refinance waves from 2018-2022,” RMI noted in its monthly endorsement report. 

Unlike the Federal Housing Administration-backed HECMs, proprietary loan originations are not required to be reported in the same manner, making exact comparisons challenging, researchers acknowledged. The growth of proprietary liens offered in the last few years in addition to HECMs has created a more competitive industry landscape, which may favor companies with a diverse set of offerings.

This week, Finance of America, which once consistently topped the HECM leaderboard, announced expansion of a private second-lien draw products to three more states.

Growth by regions

The largest growth in endorsements came from four different government-designated regions: Rocky Mountain, Northwest, New York/New Jersey and Mid Atlantic. All saw loan volume grow by approximately one-third from February to between 133 and 178 endorsements.

Warmer-weather markets continued to top the list on a per-unit basis, however, led by Pacific/Hawaii at 498 HECMs, followed by the Southeast/Caribbean geographic region with 469. 

The top 10 HECM lenders by volume remained the same from February to March, but a change at the top saw Finance of America at 454 endorsements pulling ahead of Mutual of Omaha Mortgage with 409. The latter company continues to lead year-to-date activity with 1,249 compared 1,216 for Finance of America. 

At the same point in 2025, both companies recorded 1,450 HECM loans.

Rounding out the top five for March were Longbridge Financial at 332, Goodlife Home Loans with 107 and newly renamed Onity Mortgage with 58. 

Previously known as Liberty Reverse Mortgage, the HECM lending subsidiary of Onity announced it would cease originations following the sale of assets to Finance of America late last year. Closure of the deal is still pending.