Fannie Mae Book of Business Up Slightly in May

""Fannie Mae's"":http://www.fanniemae.com/portal/index.html total book of business bumped up just slightly again in May, even as its mortgage portfolio continued to contract.

According to Fannie Mae's monthly volume summary, the GSE's book of business grew at a compound rate of 0.3 percent in May, just edging out April's 0.2 percent growth [COLUMN_BREAK]

and bringing the year-to-date monthly average to a negative value of 0.9 percent.

As of the end of the month, the book's value totaled approximately $3.179 trillion.

New business acquisitions totaled $78.0 billion in May, up from $77.3 billion in April and $71.6 billion in May 2012.

Meanwhile, the mortgage giant's gross mortgage portfolio shrank once again, contracting at an annual rate of 23.7 percent and dropping to a value of $574.9 billion--a decline of more than $13 billion from April. Year-to-date, the portfolio has an average contraction rate of 20.7 percent.

The conventional single-family serious delinquency rate fell ten basis points to 2.83 percent in May, while the multifamily serious delinquency rate dropped 6 basis points to 0.30 percent.

Fannie Mae completed 13,650 loan modifications in May, bringing the year's total to 70,544.