Fannie Mae
Definition of "Fannie Mae"
Wondering who is this Fannie Mae person that your real estate agent always mentions when the subject about mortgage is brought up?
Fannie Mae is not a person, nor a Woody Allen female character – but the way people commonly refer to The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA).
But, to be fair, although it is not a person, to better understand Fannie Mae definition we need to tell its story as if we were telling a person’s life:
Fannie Mae was founded as a government-sponsored enterprise in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration’s “New Deal” on the aftermath of the Great Depression. The idea behind Fannie Mae was to inject federal money into privately owned banks to finance home mortgages and raise the levels of home ownership after so many Americans had their homes foreclosed on due to defaulting because of the economical crisis. Fannie Mae was an aggressive second mortgage market supporter that connected their financial injection with the obligation of buying Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance. So much so, it basically held a second mortgage monopoly for over 30 years.
But with the economy re-established, The Federal National Mortgage Association has been through a lot of changes. It became a mixed-ownership corporation in the 1950s and eventually turned into a government-sponsored, publicly traded and privately held corporation spawning Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) and the privately held corporation that kept the “Fannie Mae” name without the “Federal National Mortgage Association”.
Yes, it’s like a family, right? You have Fannie Mae, younger sister Ginnie Mae and love interest on that love-hate relationship Freddie Mac. The name of this sitcom? “The Mortgages”?
Real Estate Tips:
Find a local real estate agent to advise you on the best type of mortgage to your specific home.
Popular Mortgage Terms
A provision of a loan contract stipulating that if the property is sold the loan balance must be repaid. A mortgage containing a due-on-sale clause is not assumable. This prevents a home ...
When a borrower has difficulty making the scheduled payment. Position of the Lender: A good place to start is by understanding the position of the lender. A game plan for survival ...
A request for a loan that includes the information about the potential borrower, the property and the requested loan that the solicited lender needs to make a decision. In a narrower sense, ...
The maximum allowable ratio of loan-to- value (LTV) on any loan program. Generally, these are set by mortgage insurers or by lenders and can range up to 100%, although some programs will ...
Loan applications that are withdrawn by borrowers, because they have found a better deal or for other reasons. ...
Every ARM is tied to an interest rate index. An index has three relevant features:availibility, level, volatility. All the common ARM indexes are readily available from a published source, ...
A mortgage on which the payment rises by a constant percent for a specified number of periods, after which it becomes fully-amortizing. ...
A borrower, usually refinancing rather than purchasing a home, who allows a lock to expire when interest rates go down in order to lock again at the lower rate. ...
The interest rate used in calculating the initial mortgage payment in qualifying a borrower. The rate used in qualifying borrowers may or may not be the initial rate on the mortgage. On ...
Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.