Conforming Loan Limits Proposed for the Secondary Mortgage Market

摘要

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced it could reduce the maximum conforming loan limits on mortgages acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The limit for single-family properties could drop to $400,000 from $417,000 in most parts of the country and decrease to $600,000 from $625,500 for properties in expensive real estate markets such as Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Agency managers said last year they were considering cutting the size of home loans that government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) were allowed to acquire in an effort to reduce the federal government's financial backing of the secondary mortgage market. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteed 63.4 percent of all mortgage originations in 2012 compared with 32.2 percent in 2006, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.