New Year, New Drop in Business at Fannie

The new year didn’t bring any new trends in Fannie Mae’s Book of Business, which shrank at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent in January.

It was the fastest rate of decline since December 2012, when the book’s “growth” rate came to -4.8 percent.

As of the end of the month, the total book of business was valued at about $3.155 trillion, down from $3.164 trillion at year-end 2013.

New business acquisitions plunged last month, totaling about $30.7 billion, down nearly $10 billion. The last time new acquisitions were so low was January 2009, when they came to $28.8 billion.

In all, Fannie Mae’s gross mortgage portfolio totaled $480.7 billion, a monthly drop of just under $10 billion.

While business was down, delinquency rates, too, kept declining. According to the GSE, the single-family serious delinquency rate dropped 5 basis points to 2.33 percent in January, while the multifamily serious delinquency rate was flat at 0.10 percent.

Fannie Mae reported 12,565 loan modifications to start the year. For all of last year, loan mods totaled 160,007.