Fannie Mae

A relatively new home mortgage plan allows buyers to acquire a home with a down payment of only 3 percent of the purchase price. And other qualification terms are more flexible than required with most conventional home loans.The plan is attracting an increasing number of buyers and lenders throughout the country, according to executives with Fannie Mae -- the Federal National Mortgage Association -- the organization that structured the mortgage plan in an effort to make housing more affordable to more Americans.

Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of home mortgage funds, announced last week that it was providing $20 million to help finance Baltimore's Settlement Expense Loan Program (SELP).The announcement was made during groundbreaking for Spicer's Run, a Bolton Hill townhouse project that is being built on the former Eutaw Gardens Apartments site.The $13.3 million, 86-unit community, developed by Blair McDaniels LLC, also received an equity investment of $1 million from Fannie Mae's American Communities Fund.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the combined $1.47 trillion portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reduced and that moving too slowly to do so may disrupt the U.S. financial system. "Excessive caution in reducing their portfolios could prove to be destabilizing to our financial system as a whole and in the end could seriously diminish the availability of home mortgage funds," Greenspan wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to Sen. Robert F. Bennett, a Utah Republican, released last week.

Few chapters in the annals of corporate welfare are as impressive as the one on Fannie Mae, the troubled mortgage concern. Oil companies rely on cut-rate government drilling leases to tilt things their way. Sports teams use stadiums built with taxpayer dollars. Big Sugar gets federal trade walls against competition. But Fannie Mae is the only Fortune 100 company that used to be a federal agency. Imagine if the Federal Reserve decided to sell stock to the public. You might get in on that action, right?

HAVE THE two biggest providers of American home mortgage money charged consumers and lenders billions of dollars in artificially inflated loan fees since 2001? Have you been paying more than you should on your mortgage as a direct result? Congressional committee leaders are investigating that possibility, and a federal regulatory agency has gathered preliminary data suggesting overcharges could have occurred. The answers aren't in yet on Capitol Hill, but homeowners in two states aren't waiting.

Here's some good news for homeowners facing tough financial times: You no longer have to miss two to three months of payments before your mortgage company can modify your unaffordable loan terms. Starting immediately, Fannie Mae - the mortgage giant with an estimated 18 million home loans in its portfolio or in mortgage bond pools it guarantees - will allow borrowers who face imminent financial difficulties to request "early workout" loan alterations, even if they've never been late. The policy change could help thousands of people who are losing jobs or facing layoffs as the recession crunches onward.

Q. I'm very concerned about my shares of Fannie Mae. What are the company's prospects? - C.J., via the Internet A. The largest U.S. buyer of home mortgages is trying to get its house in order. To accomplish this it must overcome its recent scandalous history of allegations of shoddy accounting and earnings manipulation that led to unbridled growth and the ouster of its management. Shares of Fannie Mae (FNM) are down 28 percent this year, after last year's 5 percent decline. Fannie Mae is in the business of buying mortgage loans from banks, packaging them into securities and selling them into the market.

Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of U.S. mortgages, filed papers to form a political action committee, allowing the company to boost its donations to members of Congress as they consider legislation to increase government oversight over the company. Through its political action committee, Washington-based Fannie Mae will be able to give $5,000 per election - primary or general balloting - to fund the campaign of any member of Congress or presidential candidate. Individuals are limited to $2,000 per election.

NEW YORK - Fannie Mae, the No. 1 buyer of U.S. mortgages, said yesterday that it beat a target set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to finance loans to low- and moderate-income families. The Washington-based. - company said 49 percent of the $259 billion worth of mortgages it financed last year went to families with an income at or below the median income of the area where they lived. HUD had set a target of 42 percent. The department has criticized the company for failing to help low-income Americans, minorities in particular, get. housing.

THE NATION'S largest source of home mortgage money has been developing a new -- and potentially controversial -- life insurance concept designed to pay off borrowers' unpaid loan balances when they die.Dubbed the Mortgage Protection Plan, the program has been under active design for more than six months at Fannie Mae, the congressionally chartered, private corporation based in Washington that purchases billions of dollars of home loans originated across the...