Freddie Mac's Portfolio Grows. Delinquency Rate Continues to Rise

Freddie Mac released their activity summary today. This data reports on monthly and year-to-date activity for Freddie Mac's Total Mortgage, Retained and Total PC portfolios. It also contains monthly delinquency rates and interest rate risk sensitivity disclosures.

Freddie Mac's total mortgage portfolio increased by $1.44 billion to $2.24 trillion in September, much less than the $6.94 billion increase reported in August and well below the $38.65 expansion seen in March 2009.  Refinance-loan purchase volume was $21.4 billion in September, down from $35.6 billion in August. Year to date Freddie Mac's total mortgage portfolio has grown by $35.23 billion.

Freddie Mac's retained portfolio of mortgage investments grew $4.76 billion to $784.17 billion in September. Purchases in the retained portfolio totaled $18.84 billion, nearly double the $9.49 billion purchased in August.   Sales totaled $3.2 billion, much less than the $15.95 billion and $33.43 in sales reported in August and July respectively.  Freddie Mac liquidated $10.79 billion in loans in September, the lowest amount since January 2009.

Under an agreement with the Department of the Treasury Freddie Mac's retained portfolio is capped at $900 billion until the end of this year when it must begin to go down at the rate of 10 percent each year until it reaches $250 billion.

Single family delinquencies (90+ days or in foreclosure) rose from 3.13 percent of their portfolio in August to 3.33 percent in September.  One year earlier the rate was 1.22 percent. 

Within that delinquency figure, the rate for non-credit enhanced single-family mortgages was 2.6 percent and for credit enhanced mortgages was 6.98 percent.  These were both slight increases over August rates.  Multi-family delinquencies were 0.11 percent.  That figure has nearly quadrupled this year.  In January multi-family delinquencies were are 0.3 percent.