Fannie Mae Reports Slip in March Business

Business continued to dip at ""Fannie Mae"":http://www.fanniemae.com/portal/index.html in March as new business acquisitions fell to their lowest level in 10 months, the GSE revealed in its monthly summary.

Fannie Mae's book of business shrank at a compound annualized rate of 1.5 percent in March, closing the quarter with a negative average monthly rate of 1.7 percent. The book totaled $3.177 trillion as of the end of the first quarter.

New business acquisitions totaled $71.4 billion, meanwhile, down from $80.2 billion the previous month and $95.3 billion the year before. The last time new business was this low was in June 2012, when acquisitions totaled $70.6 billion.

At the same time, Fannie Mae's gross mortgage portfolio contracted at a compound rate of 12.2 percent--the lowest rate of contraction seen so far this year. For the first quarter, the portfolio's average monthly negative growth rate was 20.5 percent.

As of the end of March, the portfolio's end balance was $597.8 billion.

The conventional single-family serious delinquency rate in the GSE's portfolio fell 11 basis points to 3.02 percent in March, while the multifamily serious delinquency rate fell 2 basis points to 0.39 percent, according to the summary.

Fannie Mae also reported completing 14,025 loan modifications in March, bringing the year's total to 43,153.