The market for those seniors who are physically unable or do not desire to stay in the homes they owned is apparently going strong, although it has credit issues of its own.
One company which specializes in the senior housing business, Cambridge Realty Capital Co., Chicago, reports reviewing 35 separate loan origination requests in May, the highest monthly total processed by the company since 2003.
"Incredibly, the dollar volume of loans processed was almost three times higher than the same month in 2010." Cambridge chairman Jeffrey A. Davis said. In May, the dollar value of origination requests totaled $613.9 million, compared with $210.9 million in May 2010, when the company processed 25 requests.
Davis points out that lenders close a relatively small percentage of the origination requests received. But Cambridge routinely tracks this information as an indication of market direction.
"So far in 2011, we've processed fewer requests than last year, but this may be about to change," he noted. Processed loan requests through the first five months of the year are down, from 115 in 2010 to 109 this year.
But, Davis said, that is because credit market restrictions have been impacting the types of loans the company can reasonably consider at this time. In turn, this is causing it to be more selective in the types of loans that are processed.
