Although the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. pushed up the quarterly volume of residential purchase-money loans it financed, a drop in refinance activity more than offset the gain.
For the period that started on April 1, 2017, and ended on June 30, pre-tax income at Freddie Mac came to $2.5 billion. Earnings improved compared to 1.5 billion a year earlier.
The McLean, Virginia-based organization covered its latest earnings, as well as other financial and operational results, in its second-quarter 2017 earnings report released on Tuesday.
Earnings slipped, however, from $3.3 billion in the first quarter of this year.
The secondary lender reported that it provided $190 billion in liquidity to the mortgage market during the entire first-half 2017. That worked out to $98 billion in the first quarter and $92 billion in the most-recent period.
Freddie’s second-quarter 2017 activity financed around 497,000 units — fewer than the 527,000 financed in the first-three months of this year. The latest total consisted of 189,000 loans to finance a single-family home purchase, 135,000 single-family refinances and 173,000 multifamily units. While single-family purchase and multifamily volume were both up on a quarter-over-quarter basis, refinance business sank from 208,000 in the first quarter.
The government-sponsored enterprise has paid out $108.2 billion in dividends so far to the Department of the Treasury since being forced into conservatorship in 2008. Including a planned $2 billion dividend payment in September, the total will climb to $110.2 billion — well in excess of the $71.3 billion in draws it received from 2008 through 2014.
