Serving the Affordable Housing Market
As part of our important public mission, Freddie Mac has a responsibility to provide financing to help low- and moderate-income families buy or rent decent, affordable housing. In many of the nation’s high-cost communities, and in those hardest hit by the housing and economic downturn, lowering the cost to buy or rent a home has never been more important or needed than it is today.
In the wake of arguably the worst housing and economic downturn of our time, Freddie Mac has increased its efforts to help struggling families find affordable housing by lowering the costs of financing both single-family and rental housing. Freddie Mac alone provided more than $400 billion in funding last year to help keep the single-family and multifamily markets operating – thereby allowing more than 2.1 million families, including low- and moderate-income families, to own or rent a home.
Freddie Mac’s affordable housing efforts include keeping mortgage rates low, reducing mortgage origination costs and creating sustainable mortgage products for low- and moderate-income families. We’re also helping struggling borrowers lower their mortgage payments to more affordable levels through the Obama Administration’s Making Home Affordable program.
Affordable Housing
During one of the tightest credit markets in years – Freddie Mac provided affordable single-family financing for almost 2 million families – including 700,000 low-and moderate-income families, 400,000 low-income families, and more than 100,000 very low-income families. We’ve also helped more than 120,000 homebuyers buy their first home and provided financing for approximately 18,000 families through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs program, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Guaranteed Rural Housing program and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental housing assistance programs.
Affordable Rental Housing
Freddie Mac also has a long history of financing affordable rental housing in the U.S. and thereby increasing the availability of such housing. Close to 90 percent of these rental units were affordable to families whose incomes are at or below the area median income.