Multi-family housing could be worst-hit by Fannie and Freddie’s troubles

Rising delinquencies for government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be most detrimental to the multi-family market. The two housing financiers accounted for 84 percent of all multi-family lending last year. If they were to reduce activity in that sector in the face of maturing loans, “apartment transactions could come to a near standstill,” a report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies found. Almost half of Fannie’s commercial loan delinquencies are on apartment building loans that were originated near the top of the market. Its delinquency rate was 0.62 percent at the end of September, nearly four times what it was in September 2008. Among Fannie and Freddie’s investments in the multi-family market were $1.5 billion in securities backed by the beleaguered Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex, now estimated to be worth just one-third of its $5.4 billion purchase price in 2006. [WSJ]

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