Hud is reporting that it insured some 300,000 loans in the 16-year period between 1990 and 2006. It also says that it has nearly matched last year’s record total.

“Since 1990, more than 308,000 senior homeowners have used HUD’s reverse mortgage program, which covers almost 90 percent of the reverse mortgage market, to borrow against the equity in their homes, making cash readily available to cover necessary expenses. There has been a 10-fold increase in the number of reverse mortgage loans backed the FHA between 2000 and 2006. More than 76,000 seniors obtained a reverse mortgage through HUD in 2006, compared to just 6,637 people in 2000. The number of HECM’s insured by the FHA has steadily increased over the past 17 years, with the largest increases coming over the past six years. The FHA insured 18,084 loans in 2003 and more than doubled that amount to 37,789 in 2004. In 2007, the FHA has already backed 69,833 loans, putting the HECM program on pace to surpass its 2006 total this summer.”

To give some perspective to the HUD numbers, it’s worth noting that just in 2005 the country’s nation banks and the mortgage subsidiaries originated some 26 million mortgages.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 3:50 am and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.