Graph and download economic data for 15-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average in the United States (MORTGAGE15US) from 1991-08-30 to 2025-09-18 about 15-year, mortgage, fixed, interest rate, interest, rate, and USA.

View weekly updates and historical trends for 30 Year Mortgage Rate. from United States. Source: Freddie Mac. Track economic data with YCharts analytics.

Graph and download economic data for 5/1-Year Adjustable Rate Mortgage Average in the United States (DISCONTINUED) (MORTGAGE5US) from 2005-01-06 to 2022-11-10 about adjusted, mortgage, 5-year, interest rate, interest, rate, and USA.

30 Year Mortgage Rate in the United States decreased to 6.26 percent in September 18 from 6.35 percent in the previous week. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States 30 Year Mortgage Rate.

Graph and download economic data for 1-Year Adjustable Rate Mortgage Average in the United States (DISCONTINUED) (MORTGAGE1US) from 1984-01-06 to 2015-12-31 about 1-year, adjusted, mortgage, interest rate, interest, rate, and USA.

View weekly updates and historical trends for Southeast Freddie Mac Region 15 Year Mortgage Rate (DISCONTINUED). Source: Freddie Mac. Track economic data …

View weekly updates and historical trends for 15 Year Mortgage Rate. from United States. Source: Freddie Mac. Track economic data with YCharts analytics.

View weekly updates and historical trends for 5/1 Adjustable Rate Mortgage Rate (DISCONTINUED). from United States. Source: Freddie Mac. Track economic da…

View monthly updates and historical trends for Mortgage Spread. from United States. Source: Freddie Mac. Track economic data with YCharts analytics.

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.