Knight Capital Group Inc. has announced that it has agreed to acquire Urban Financial Group Inc., a privately-held, independent mortgage company. An originator of direct and brokered residential mortgage loans, Urban Financial is a major provider of home equity conversion mortgages (HECM), or reverse mortgages, in the U.S. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.Read more

First is whoever closes and funds first, and Robert W. Evans Jr. got there first. The more than half a million Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) that have been closed and funded since 1989 began with the one he wrote for then 79-year-old Marjorie Mason of Fairway, Kan.Read more

With overall wholesale reverse mortgage volumes down by six percent as recently reported by Reverse Market Insight, the wholesale division at Generation Mortgage Company experienced an increase as the company closed 182 percent more Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) in 2009 than in 2008, making the company the fifth largest reverse mortgage wholesale lender in the country.Read more

On Feb. 5, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed reverse mortgage insurance legislation, and it became the task of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) to create a marketable product out of the law. There were no models. So, HUD put a product-design team together. Edward J. Szymanoski, an Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs at HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research, was a vital member of that pioneering product-development team.Read more