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   James E. Veale, CPA, MBT

   April 2, 2018 at 11:50 am

   At 29,838, this is the best HECM endorsement total for the first six month period for any fiscal year since fiscal 2011.

   January 2018 had the highest monthly total for HECM endorsements since March 2011. The total for the month of March 2018 was 4,300 which was 31.9% lower than January 2018’s total. Yet the total was almost double that of what was expected for the month of March 2018.

   It is strongly believed that a large percentage of the endorsements for March 2018 are still coming from HECM applications that received their case number assignments in September 2017. November 2017 had the highest modified annualized conversion rate so far for fiscal 2018 at 68%. That conversion rate for the month of March 2018 is 64.4% which is higher than the average such rate for any fiscal year since fiscal 2011. That is great improvement over the conversion rate for that of either January or February 2018. This indicates that a substantial percentage of the applications receiving case number assignments in one month can take as long as six months to get endorsed.

   Interestingly, the 4,300 endorsement total for March 2018 is the worst total for any March since March 2004 (14 fiscal years ago). The total endorsements for March 2018 is 19.8% lower than the endorsements for March 2017 and 17% lower than the endorsement total for February 2018.

   While total endorsements for March 2018 were not spectacular, they may be sufficient to break the downward slope to the current pattern of secular stagnation.

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