Representatives of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bandied about some big numbers during a session I recently attended at the New England Mortgage Bankers Conference in Providence, RI.
Mark Bickert, vice president, single family, Fannie Mae, told the regional mortgage banking conference that in the first half of 2010, Fannie Mae did more than $240 billion in MBS and financed one million conventional mortgages as well as 115,000 multifamily mortgages.
Refinancings accounted for 770,000 of the single-family loans.
He said the agency had supplied $1 trillion in liquidity for the mortgage market since January 2009. It has done 117,000 trial modifications under the Home Affordable Modification Program, and 237,000 workouts.
Its Dallas office alone has seen 90,000 foreclosed property sales in the first half, he said.
Freddie Mac’s James Cotton, vice president, sales, also had some big numbers to offer the audience. Like 2.3 million borrowers with lower payments since the beginning of 2009, providing $5.6 billion in savings (and therefore stimulus to the general economy). And, Freddie has helped 350,000 borrowers avoid foreclosure.
Freddie’s net effect on the mortgage market is to stabilize it, provide liquidity, help keep rates low, and reduce foreclosures, he said.
Freddie Mac has 25% of outstanding mortgages, he said, but just 10% of delinquencies.
Neither official, though, mentioned the biggest number of all—the amount Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have cost U.S. taxpayers since being taken over by the federal government two years ago.
There was a lot of interesting stuff at the GSE session at the Rhode Island Convention Center (the NEMBC rotates between Providence and Newport). Bickert said the general outlook is for soft consumer spending, lower growth, continued struggling in housing demand, weak employment, and lower prospects for both new and existing home sales.
While housing starts are up 4% in 2010 from their record lows, he said prices have declined slightly in 2010 (he believes they will be stable next year).
But negative equity continues to be a problem, with home values down 16.9% since 2006. In New England, where the conference was, that number was even larger, down 19%, ranging from 7% down in Vermont to 26% down in Rhode Island, he said.
