Secondary activity was stronger, earnings remained in the black and delinquency was down during the latest quarter at Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. The secondary lender is canceling more of its repurchase requests than it is collecting.
Third-quarter purchases and issuances at Freddie Mac were $112.9 billion, more than the prior quarter’s $100.7 billion in secondary marketing activity. In the same period last year, purchases and issuances totaled just $80.7 billion.
Earnings data released Tuesday indicate that the government-controlled enterprise has provided more than $1.6 trillion in funding to the mortgage market since Jan. 1, 2009, to finance 5.6 million residential refinances and 1.4 million purchase transactions. In addition, Freddie said it has financed 1.1 million multifamily units.
While weighted-average credit scores haven’t strayed far from 762 this year, they are higher than the 723 scores on loans purchased between 2005 and 2008.
Weighted-average loan-to-value ratios, which had been teetering around the two-thirds level for the past three years, jumped to 68 percent in the second quarter and 69 percent during the latest three-month period.
One-quarter of all of Freddie’s credit losses were concentrated in California during the latest period, while Florida accounted for 17 percent.
Freddie’s total mortgage portfolio was $1.9729 trillion as of Sept. 30.
Residential 90-delinquency was 3.37 percent, lower that three months earlier and a year earlier. Freddie highlighted in a chart how its residential 90-day delinquency as of June 30 was 3.45 percent — lower than the overall industry average of 7.31 percent and better than the industry’s prime mortgage delinquency rate of 4.98 percent.
Sixty-day multifamily delinquency was 0.27 percent, also lower than both prior comparison periods.
The McLean, Va.-based company said that outstanding repurchase requests ended September at $2.9 billion, the same as at the end of June. The ending balance reflected $2.2 billion in new requests issued, $0.8 billion in requests that were collected and $1.4 billion in cancelled requests.
Third-quarter income before taxes came in at $2.6 billion, off from the second quarter’s $2.9 billion. Earnings, however, swung from a $4.5 billion loss in the same period during 2011.
Freddie has made a total of $71.3 billion in Treasury draw requests. However, less than $0.2 billion in draws have been requested during the past four quarters combined — while none have been made in the past two quarters.
Freddie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, issued a report last month that indicated Freddie is not expected to require any additional Treasury draws after this year.
Freddie has made $21.9 billion in aggregate dividend payments to the Department of the Treasury, including $1.8 billion paid in the third quarter.
Freddie reports a staff of 4,900 employees.
