Reverse Mortgage Activity vs Senior Homeowners by State
Thirteen states originate reverse mortgages above the national rate of 9 per 10,000 owner households age 62 and over. Those states hold 31% of the country's senior homeowners and account for 58% of the loans.
The gap follows home value. Activity runs at 19.6 per 10,000 senior owner households in the West, 7.4 in the South, 6.3 in the Northeast and 3.7 in the Midwest. Utah leads at 32.7 and West Virginia trails at 1.9. The average Western senior owns a home worth $753,832. The average reverse borrower's home is worth $755,579. Those two figures sit within a quarter of one percent of each other, which is most of the explanation for the map.
The addressable market is far larger than the production. CensusVision counts 35.5 million owner households age 62 and over holding $16.5 trillion in property value, 21.7 million of them carrying no mortgage. The 31,829 reverse mortgages originated in 2025 carried $9.6 billion in initial principal limit, six hundredths of one percent of that value.
The borrower profile explains the underwriting. Average property value $755,579, average initial principal limit $303,079 or 40.1% of value, average applicant income $39,437, average interest rate 6.791%, across 88 active lenders. That is nineteen dollars of house for every dollar of annual income.
Reverse mortgages are excluded from HOEPA high-cost coverage under 12 CFR 1026.32(a)(2). See what makes a mortgage high cost, or explore reverse mortgage lending in HMDAVision.
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