Reverse-mortgage and HELOC inquiries together accounted for about 76% of RateZip's summer inquiry mix for June through August 2026. That describes this inquiry channel. It does not establish that 76% of U.S. mortgages were equity loans, or that borrowers had stopped refinancing.
The comparison uses RateZip's aggregate mortgage-demand dataset, which underlies the public mortgage-demand dashboard, generated October 4. It covers three completed months in the same recent source regime, rather than comparing across older platform changes. The dashboard presents shares; this article likewise does not disclose absolute inquiry volumes.
| Inquiry category | June-August share of available product data |
|---|---|
| Reverse mortgage | 61.5% |
| HELOC | 14.4% |
| Purchase | 21.9% |
| Refinance | 2.2% |
The two equity categories together account for 75.9% of the available data. Small source cells are suppressed; July's refinance cell is absent and is not treated as a confirmed zero. The share therefore is approximate. A sensitivity check under the dataset's suppression rule changes the equity share by less than 0.2 percentage point. That does not change the broad mix comparison, and it does not reconstruct private records.
What the mix measures
An inquiry is an expression of interest recorded by the network. It is not a completed application, an approval or a funded loan, and the aggregates do not establish a count of unique households. Acquisition activity and the mix of participating channels can affect which inquiries arrive. The figures do not isolate the influence of interest rates or establish that one product displaced another.
Reverse mortgages and HELOCs are grouped here because both concern existing-home equity. That grouping does not make the products interchangeable. Their eligibility, repayment obligations and costs differ, and combining their shares should not obscure those differences.
Why “the refi era is over” goes beyond the evidence
The dashboard documents source changes by product during early 2026. It also separates reverse inquiries from refinance beginning in January 2023; earlier refinance history includes reverse activity that cannot be separated. An apparent long-run change can therefore include classification and source effects.
Even in the selected summer window, the small refinance share describes this network's observed traffic. It cannot show that refinance activity elsewhere disappeared. The defensible conclusion is narrower and useful: within the available RateZip summer data, equity products dominated the inquiry mix. National originations and completed-loan demand require a different dataset.
RateZip is operated by Peklava LLC, DBA RateZip, a licensed mortgage broker (NMLS ID 1592292). We are compensated by some of the partners shown, which may affect which offers appear and where. It does not affect our reporting or recommendations. See our editorial standards.