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Freddie Portfolio Grows, Delinquency Rates Down

Freddie Mac’s [1] total mortgage portfolio grew 4.8 percent from March 2016 to March 2017, according to the GSE’s Monthly Volume Summary released on Wednesday. Freddie handled $30 billion in purchases and issuances for the month and $98 billion year-to-date.

Freddie’s single-family purchasing market was nearly split between refinance loans and purchase loans, with purchases accounting just edging out refinance loans at 51 percent. Total single-family refinance loan purchase volume hit $11.9 billion, nine percent of which was relief refinance loans.

In total, there were just under 6,000 single-family loan modifications for March, bringing the 2017 to-date total up to 11,999.

Serious delinquencies were down for the GSE’s single-family portfolio, with a drop from February’s 0.98 percent to 0.92 percent in March. Multi-family serious delinquencies were stable, remaining at 0.03 percent. Serious delinquencies on single-family loans include mortgages that are at least three monthly payments behind or are currently going through the foreclosure process. Seriously delinquent multi-family loans are at least two monthly payments behind.

As for Freddie’s mortgage-related investments portfolio, the GSE saw a $4.2 billion drop in aggregate unpaid principal balance over the month, bringing its total portfolio balance to $291 billion. Its mortgage-related securities, however, saw an annualized increase of 6.2 percent.

Total purchases of the GSE’s mortgage-related securities into its mortgage-related investments portfolio equaled $7.3 billion, though $0.8 billion in purchase sale agreements were unsettled as of March 31.

“The ending balance of our mortgage-related investments portfolio as of March 31, 2017, after giving effect to these unsettled agreements would have been $292 billion,” the report stated.”

The measure of Freddie’s exposure to changes in portfolio market values, or PMVS-L, came in at an average of $0 million for the month. The duration gap average was also at zero.

Freddie Mac releases its Volume Summary monthly. To view the full data set, visit FreddieMac.com. [2]