January Purchases $57.2 Billion at Fannie Mae

February 18, 2003

Duration gap at -4

By MortgageDaily.com staff
MortgageDaily.com

Fannie Mae's portfolios continue to stretch at the seams, according to its first financial summary for 2003. Its duration gap also continues to be running behind, however.

The government-sponsored housing enterprise's purchases were $10 billion off in January as well, but the decrease is deceiving because it was caused by purchases of delayed commitments in December.

Fannie purchased a total of $57.2 billion in mortgages in January, compared with almost $67.9 billion in December and almost $36.4 billion in January 2002.

When mortgage rates plummeted in the fall, Fannie's purchase commitments skyrocketed. As the government-sponsored enterprise made those commitments, it delayed the actual purchase because of better pricing in the forward market, it said. Fannie then bought those loans through December and January, creating higher purchase volumes.

Its retained commitments totaled almost $25.1 billion during the month, down from December's $29.2 billion.

Fannie's gross mortgage portfolio stands at almost $811 billion, up from almost $791 billion in December. It's book of business grew to almost $1.859 trillion last month from the $1.820 trillion in December. The book of business figure in January 2002 finished at $1.580 billion.

Mortgage-backed securities issued from Fannie's portfolio totaled almost $2.3 billion in January. Its effective duration gap was still off, at -4 months. It was at -5 months in December and +2 in January 2002

Source: Fannie Mae


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