Fannie Mae

A subsidiary of Resource America Inc., a Philadelphia real estate investment firm, said it paid $11.4 million for a half-occupied Houston apartment complex with 856 units. Fannie Mae had foreclosed on the property in August 2010, after the former owners defaulted on an $18.6 million loan. The estimated replacement cost of the apartment complex is $53 million, the buyer, Resource Real Estate Opportunity REIT Inc., said. - Harold Brubaker

IT'S NOT that we're not enthusiastic about the announcement this week that Fannie Mae will be helping 250,000 Pennsylvania families, including 50,000 first-time homebuyers, purchase homes with a new Keystone Housing Initiative. Fannie Mae will commit $32 billion in mortgage financing, and that's a good thing. But we can't help being a little worried, especially since the foreclosure crisis in the city continues. This month, 1,300 properties were brought up for sheriff's sale - even more than last month's 900. This time, 160 homeowners who had started the process of saving their homes got reprieves.

The Dec. 14 article on real estate appraisals was at best a very simplistic study of a complex problem. The Fannie Mae guidelines are best suited for tract housing, where there are many clones of essentially the same model. However, in some areas, particularly older areas, where houses have been customized by successive owners for sometimes 100 years or more, finding comparables that meet the Fannie Mae criteria is a nearly impossible task; indeed, sometimes no comparables exist that fit neatly into the Fannie Mae guidelines.

Every segment of the U.S. housing industry - buyers, builders and lenders - will be badly hurt if White House budget planners are successful in placing new fees on government-sponsored housing agencies. That assessment was voiced by leaders of the housing industry in the wake of the Reagan administration's proposals for the fiscal 1987 budget unveiled last week. And those leaders announced a joint effort to defeat the budget proposal. At a news conference Thursday, three of the leading housing and housing- financing organizations said that President Reagan's proposed budget for fiscal 1987 "could prevent hundreds of thousands of moderate-income Americans from buying homes of their own, and that would jeopardize the availability of affordable mortgage credit.

The confusion is over for Lynnewood Gardens residents. After getting conflicting information about where to send their September rent checks earlier this month, bewildered tenants of the sprawling Elkins Park apartment complex Saturday received hand-delivered letters from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) resolving the situation. The letters, dated Aug. 30, said a financial settlement had been reached with Lynnewood Associates, which owns the 1,800 apartments, and directed residents to continue sending monthly rent checks to the landlord, as they had done.

BET Investments of Horsham has purchased the 216-unit garden-style Lincoln Woods Apartments on Germantown Pike in Lafayette Hill for $25.5 million. The 10-year loan for the purchase of the complex, built in 1991, was arranged through Fannie Mae by Berkadia Commercial Mortgage L.L.C. in Horsham. It represented 80 percent of total acquisition costs plus short-term capital budget. BET has acquired 1,000 apartment units in the region in the last six months.

Real estate investors may soon have to dig deeper into their pockets to buy residential properties - a move that could enhance home values in some neighborhoods, according to some people in the real estate industry. However, the change is expected to hit small investors hard, especially since many of them are struggling with recent tax changes that have made ownership less profitable, some real estate observers said. Beginning Jan. 1, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two major buyers of mortgages, will require a 30 percent down payment on investor-owned residential properties of up to four units.

It's a bitter pillow to swallow, but the Bush administration had little choice but to rescue mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite the potentially high cost to taxpayers. Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson removed the CEOs of both companies and put the institutions into a form of bankruptcy. A new regulator will oversee their operations. When taxpayers are told that a government rescue plan "might" cost a certain amount, you can bet it will end up costing even more than projected.

Area mortgage lenders are bracing for another flood of mortgage refinancings despite a management ouster at Freddie Mac, a key government-sponsored, mortgage-finance company. Freddie Mac's board of directors ousted the McLean, Va., company's president and chief operating officer Monday, saying they questioned his "cooperation and candor" in an ongoing investigation of accounting irregularities. Two other top executives resigned. "There's been almost no effect" of the controversy on mortgage rates, said Joseph A. Splendido, president of Colonial Mortgage Servicing Co., of Warrington, and a governor of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.

Federal officials are looking into ways to guard against an S&L type of bailout occurring in the secondary-mortgage market. By most accounts, the two major concerns that provide lenders with money for home loans are in good financial shape. Nevertheless, Congress and the administration want the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac) to further insulate the taxpayers should their fortunes ever sour. The latest proposal, however, has met with resistance from lenders who fear that it could drive up mortgage interest rates and dry up the supply of home loans made with low down payments, as well as choke off lending for condominiums and vacation homes.