Freddie to Expand Web-Based Offerings

The "new Freddie Mac" says it will be expanding the list of loan products available through its Web-based selling system this summer by adding a number of 40-year fixed-rate mortgages, a score of adjustable loans, and federally insured rural housing loans."Our main goal is to make sure we provide liquidity across a broad spectrum of the marketplace," Paul Mullings, Freddie's senior vice president of single-family sourcing, said at the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Secondary Market Conference in Chicago. The Freddie Mac official said the company is "putting a lot of money into infrastructure" so it can move more quickly with market forces. "From time to time we will try to innovate ourselves," he said. "But most innovation is taking place in the primary market, and we want to be able to respond to it." When fully implemented, the changes will make it possible for lenders to access, price, and deliver on a flow basis virtually every mortgage product currently offered in Freddie Mac's seller/servicer guide. The company has no interest right now in buying interest-only and payment-option ARMs on a flow basis, but it is studying them, Mr. Mullings said. "As the products evolve, we will evolve with them," he told a news briefing. Freddie Mac can be found online at http://www.freddiemac.com.