Freddie Mac purchased $39.6 billion of mortgages from its seller/servicers in October, flat from the previous month, but a 23% jump from the same period a year ago.
However, September was Freddie's best month of the year in terms of new acquisitions and with October following strongly, it's another sign that the origination market is doing well – although 83% of the GSE's business volume is refinancings.
Increasingly, mortgage bankers are worried about how their origination pipelines will fair once refis run their course over the next few quarters, though some funders are reporting multiple refis by the same client.
On the surface, it appears that the government controlled GSE had a strong month, but its single-family delinquency rate rose slightly to 3.82% as of October 31 after declining on a sequential basis for most of the year. (February represented a peak in delinquencies for the GSE: 4.2%.)
Its multifamily portfolio is coming under some stress with reported late payments of 0.44%, an all-time high, but a relatively low figure compared to delinquencies on its single-family investments.
At the end of October, Freddie had a total "book of business" (portfolio and guarantees) of $2.18 trillion, a 3% decline from a year ago.
