A mortgage executive says 30 million homeowners over 55 have equity they can't access, and brokers who understand the gap have a real opportunity
At a time when home equity remains near a record high, there is a subset of homeowners who may still be struggling to extract that equity from their homes.
Elderly borrowers, often on fixed incomes post-retirement, may find themselves struggling to qualify for conventional equity loan products. There are reverse mortgages as an option, but adoption of those products continues to lag.
According to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), just 28,172 reverse mortgages were completed in 2025, slightly higher than 2024 but down more than 80,000 from an all-time high of 114,692 in 2009.
With so few borrowers taking advantage of reverse products, and many others unable to qualify for traditional HELOCs, one mortgage executive believes a large number of older homeowners could be sitting on sizeable equity balances they cannot tap into. That’s why he and his team went to work trying to find a creative solution.
David Peskin (pictured top), president and CEO of HighTechLending, knows this client base well, spending many years working with reverse mortgage products. His company has built a HELOC product aimed at older borrowers who cannot qualify for traditional loan products but who don’t want to use a reverse mortgage.
"There are so many older homeowners out there that have tremendous equity in their home and they're running out of solutions," Peskin told Mortgage Professional America. "They're on fixed income, they can't qualify due to debt-to-income ratio, or their credit card bills have been racking up and their scores are coming down a little bit, but yet they're not turning to reverse mortgages.
“I think it's because a lot of people are not necessarily wanting to pay no monthly payment. I think they're just looking to find a comfortable payment."
An untapped market
Peskin estimated approximately 30 million homeowners over 55, split between roughly 16 million without a first lien who could draw on equity directly and another 14 million with an existing first lien who have built significant equity and need a second product.
"It's a very, very, very big market," he said. "In fact, it's a bigger market than the overall traditional market as a whole."
The distribution gap between reverse and conventional is part of what he's hoping to address, Peskin said. Reverse mortgages are offered by approximately 2% of originators while HELOCs are offered by the other 98%, and building the product as a HELOC is an attempt to reach the broader originator base.
"Reverse mortgages are also offered by a very small subset of the overall market," Peskin said. "We wanted to build a chassis that would give access to the bigger, broader market with a program that is what people are used to."
Rising costs are adding urgency to the equity access problem, he said. HOA fees, homeowners insurance, real estate taxes, and everyday expenses are all moving higher, squeezing fixed-income homeowners who have wealth on paper but limited monthly cash flow.
"Why not tap into the largest asset you have in a comfortable way?" he said. "Just because it's illiquid doesn't mean you can't have a creative way to tap into it that gives you control. And it's a lot better than going out and ringing up $50,000 in credit card debt at 20%."
Finding creative solutions
He said the product caps the minimum required payment at a fraction of what a standard mortgage would require. If a borrower's standard payment is $1,000 a month, it might allow a minimum of $200, with the unpaid $800 added to the loan balance. The minimum payment would be the amount that would count toward the borrower’s DTI calculation.
It was important to find creative solutions that didn’t involve steering everyone toward reverse mortgages. Peskin said while that product is still right for some borrowers, it’s not the best option for everyone, and the reverse sector still struggles with overall perception problems.
“There are so many misperceptions; there are a lot of people very skeptical about (reverse mortgages),” he said. “And obviously, we all know it’s just a great product. It really is. I’ve been doing it for a very, very long time. But the reality is the industry isn’t growing just because there’s a lot of skepticism.”
Peskin has watched loan product offerings increase during his career. He remembers a time when non-QM loans were few and far between. Now they are a large portion of all mortgage originations.
"Go back 10, 15 years ago, the old non-QM space was — you're 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 sort of heading in that direction with this as well."
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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.
