A mortgage executive says brokers who don't offer reverse and non-QM products are missing a generation of borrowers
At a time when some pipelines may be slowing due to elevated interest rates, there is a large group of potential customers who may be going untapped.
That group includes older homeowners who might not qualify for a conventional mortgage due to limited income. There is also a subset of those homeowners who are part of the 40% of people who don’t have a mortgage on their home, according to the US Census Bureau.
Those homeowners not only present an opportunity for brokers to find business in a tough market, but many of these older customers are in need of tapping into the equity that has built up to take care of unexpected expenses and high-rate credit cards and loans.
One lending executive who has spent decades in the reverse mortgage and equity lending space said those homeowners need assistance but can’t get it if a loan originator doesn’t offer the products that can help them.
David Peskin (pictured top), president and CEO of HighTechLending, said the product focus most brokers have adopted by default is leaving a large portion of the market untouched.
"They need to be sort of agnostic as to how old the borrower is," Peskin told Mortgage Professional America. "A lot of them are focusing on younger borrowers. But what about all of the homeowners that are out there that nobody is paying any attention to that really need to access the equity in their home?"
‘Multimillionaires on paper’
Peskin said many of these borrowers have significant net worth, including their home equity, but simply don’t have the cash flow that allows for conventional mortgage qualification.
"We're coming across people who are multimillionaires on paper, right? Equities, stocks, bonds, but there is no cash flow," he said. "And again, this is a perfect opportunity for them to tap into the equity in their home versus selling off some of their retirement funds or even selling their home and incurring capital gains. So there are also estate planning purposes for this."
The self-employed borrower is a version of the same profile, Peskin said. Income structured through business deductions or variable year-to-year earnings puts a credit-worthy borrower into a category most brokers without non-QM access cannot serve.
By offering a wider range of products, brokers can help more borrowers and potentially fill pipelines that have thinned without traditional refinance volume.
"If you're limiting yourself to just the conventional products that are out there, you're not really helping all of the customers that are out there that you might be speaking with," he said.
Finding new solutions
The parallel Peskin draws is the non-QM market ten years ago, a category that started as a few unfamiliar loans a year and grew into a significant portion of origination volume once the market understood what it was for.
"Go back 10, 15 years ago, in the old non-QM space, you were lucky if you saw a few loans here and there," he said. "And now it's a big prevailing market. So I think we're heading in that direction with this as well."
Peskin said the broker hesitation to expand into new product categories has always puzzled him.
"It's so amazing how you see how many people just want to stay focused on a narrow product base," he said. "If you could take the time to just learn — not just our product, any product that's out there that's new and innovative — to see if that can help you. Because why would you turn away business or a good referral partner if there's a product that you could help them with?
“What you may think might only do one or two loans here and there could end up leading to 30 or 40 or 50 a year. Because it's an untapped market."
The scale of that untapped market is significant. According to data tracked by the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association from HUD endorsements, just 28,172 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages were completed in 2025, with 18,440 through June 2026. That is against an estimated pool of 30 million homeowners over the age of 55 who have substantial equity in their homes.
"People have worked years and years to build all this equity in their home, and they want to remain in their home," he said. "They really do, more than ever before. So why not give them a product that helps preserve equity, gives them the flexibility they need, and allows them to remain and age in place? And that's the key."
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This article is part of our Monthly Spotlight series, which in July focuses on reverse mortgages and refinances. Full coverage can be found here.
