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Urban Institute reported earlier this month that the mortgage-related investment portfolios for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to contract and were both well below their 2015 portfolio cap as of the end of November.
Whereas Freddie Mac’s mortgage-related investment portfolio took an upward turn in December, however, Fannie Mae’s mortgage portfolio continued contracting at a substantial rate, according to Fannie Mae’s December 2015 Monthly Volume Summary.
Fannie Mae’s gross mortgage portfolio contracted at a compound annualized rate of 25.1 percent in December, leaving the aggregate unpaid principal balance (UPB) of the loans in the portfolio at $345.1 billion. It was the portfolio’s ninth consecutive month of contraction, and the portfolio contracted at a rate of 16.5 percent for the full year of 2015. The aggregate UPB in the portfolio was $413.3 billion at the end of December 2014. The portfolio’s value in December fell even further below the cap for 2015 of $399.18 billion and remains slightly higher than the 2016 cap, which is $339.4 billion.
Fannie Mae’s gross mortgage portfolio has expanded in only three months out of the last 65 since June 2010 (March 2015, January 2015, and December 2012). At the beginning of that stretch in June 2010, the portfolio's value was $818 billion.
The total book of business for Fannie Mae, which includes the gross mortgage portfolio plus total Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities and other guarantees minus Fannie Mae MBS in the portfolio, contracted at an annual rate of 0.2 percent in December down to a total value of about $3.099 trillion. For the full year of 2015, the book of business contracted at a rate of 0.8 percent.
The number of loan modifications completed by Fannie Mae was up over the month, from 5,618 in November up to 6,599 in December. For the full year of 2015, Fannie Mae completed 94,212 loan mods, an average of 7,851 per month. This number was way down from the average of 10,235 loan mods per month completed on Fannie Mae-backed loans for the full year of 2014.
The serious delinquency rate on single-family mortgages insured by Fannie Mae declined by three basis points from November to December down to at 1.55 percent after holding flat at 1.58 percent from October to November. The serious delinquency rate for Fannie Mae is consistent with the level reported for September 2008—the month that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into conservatorship by the FHFA, at the onset of the housing crisis.
Click here to view Fannie Mae’s entire December 2015 Monthly Volume Summary.
