The Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created by the U.S. congress in 1938, in order to maintain liquidity and stability in the domestic mortgage market. The company is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), meaning that while it was a publicly traded company for most of its history, it was still supported by the federal government. While there is no legally binding guarantee of shares in GSEs or their securities, it is generally acknowledged that the U.S. government is highly unlikely to let these enterprises fail. Due to these implicit guarantees, GSEs are able to access financing at a reduced cost of interest. Fannie Mae's main activity is the purchasing of mortgage loans from their originators (banks, mortgage brokers etc.) and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in order to ease the access of U.S. homebuyers to housing credit. The early 2000s U.S. mortgage finance boom During the early 2000s, Fannie Mae was swept up in the U.S. housing boom which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The association's stated goal of increasing access of lower income families to housing finance coalesced with the interests of private mortgage lenders and Wall Street investment banks, who had become heavily reliant on the housing market to drive profits. Private lenders had begun to offer riskier mortgage loans in the early 2000s due to low interest rates in the wake of the "Dot Com" crash and their need to maintain profits through increasing the volume of loans on their books. The securitized products created by these private lenders did not maintain the standards which had traditionally been upheld by GSEs. Due to their market share being eaten into by private firms, however, the GSEs involved in the mortgage markets began to also lower their standards, resulting in a 'race to the bottom'. The fall of Fannie Mae The lowering of lending standards was a key factor in creating the housing bubble, as mortgages were now being offered to borrowers with little or no ability to repay the loans. Combined with fraudulent practices from credit ratings agencies, who rated the junk securities created from these mortgage loans as being of the highest standard, this led directly to the financial panic that erupted on Wall Street beginning in 2007. As the U.S. economy slowed down in 2006, mortgage delinquency rates began to spike. Fannie Mae's losses in the mortgage security market in 2006 and 2007, along with the losses of the related GSE 'Freddie Mac', had caused its share value to plummet, stoking fears that it may collapse. On September 7th 2008, Fannie Mae was taken into government conservatorship along with Freddie Mac, with their stocks being delisted from stock exchanges in 2010. This act was seen as an unprecedented direct intervention into the economy by the U.S. government, and a symbol of how far the U.S. housing market had fallen.

Graph and download economic data for 15-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average in the United States (MORTGAGE15US) from 1991-08-30 to 2025-03-20 about 15-year, fixed, mortgage, interest rate, interest, rate, and USA.

Long term dataset showing the 30 year fixed rate mortgage average in the United States since 1971.

The Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Bankers Originations Index in the United States declined for the third consecutive quarter, reflecting a trend of decreasing commercial mortgage originations. In the first quarter of 2023, the index stood at 142 index points, meaning that originations had increased by 42 percent since the base year, 2001 when the index value was set to 100. Among the different institution types, Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae witnessed the highest, and CMBS/Conduits the lowest index value.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is an independent regulatory agency that is not part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The FHFA was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and is responsible for the effective supervision, regulation, and housing mission oversight of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), Common Securitization Solutions, LLC (CSS), and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which includes the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) and the Office of Finance. Since 2008, FHFA has also served as conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Conforming Loan Limits are mortgage limits set annually (as required by HERA) by the FHFA. In order for a mortgage loan to be eligible to be insured by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, the loan amount must be less than the loan limit. Mortgage exceeding the Conforming Loan Limit are referred to as "non-conforming loans" or "jumbo loans." While most counties use a single set of Conforming Loan Limits based on the number of units, high cost of living counties use higher Conforming Loan Limits. The FHFA analyzes year-over-year change in average home prices in October of each year using the Monthly Interest Rate Survey (MIRS) to adjust the Conforming Loan Limits for the upcoming year.

Geospatial data in this feature service uses the Census 2010 County geographies.

To learn more about about the FHFA, please visit:https://www.fhfa.gov/AboutUs



For more information about FHFA Conforming Loan Limits, please visit:https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/Pages/Conforming-Loan-Limits.aspx, for questions about the spatial attribution of this dataset, please reach out to us at GISHelpdesk@hud.gov. 

Date of Coverage: 2022 Data Dictionary:DD_FHFA Conforming Loan Limits

Graph and download economic data for Delinquency Rate on Single-Family Residential Mortgages, Booked in Domestic Offices, All Commercial Banks (DRSFRMACBS) from Q1 1991 to Q4 2024 about domestic offices, delinquencies, 1-unit structures, mortgage, family, residential, commercial, domestic, banks, depository institutions, rate, and USA.

House Price Index MoM in the United States decreased to 0.20 percent in January from 0.50 percent in December of 2024. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States FHFA House Price Index MoM.