Rental Housing
Freddie Mac's mission is to support residential housing, not just homeownership. We have an active multifamily business that finances mortgages for apartment buildings across the country and includes senior, student and military housing. Since we were created, Freddie Mac has made home possible for more than 7 million renters. Today we are one of the largest sources of funding to the multifamily market.
Affordable housing is at the center of this business. The vast majority of the multifamily mortgages we finance support individuals or families earning at or below the local area median income. Even though our business volume typically represents just a small percent of Freddie Mac's overall business, multifamily mortgages comprise almost a third of our company's affordable housing units.
During the housing and credit boom, Freddie Mac didn't agree with the market's view on risk, so we consciously reduced our multifamily market share and held tight to our responsible lending standards. As a result, our multifamily business managed to avoid the worst of the bust and instead, was able to finance approximately one out of every four multifamily loans during the housing crisis – while keeping our serious multifamily loan delinquency rate among the lowest in the industry at 0.16 percent.
In addition, many of the properties we finance likely would have trouble securing funding elsewhere. A large majority of these properties are more than 10 years old, and many are in need of capital improvements. And they are located in cities of all sizes across the country. We also finance newer, higher-end properties in major cities.
We continue to be one of the leading sources of liquidity for the multifamily market. In the first quarter of 2013, we provided financing for 87,000 apartment units. Since the housing crisis began, we’ve provided financing for 1.3 million units of rental housing.