This annual report describes FHFA's accomplishments, as well as challenges, the agency faced in meeting the strategic goals and objectives during the past fiscal year.
Read about the agency’s 2015 examinations of Fannie Mac, Freddie Mac and the Home Loan Bank System.
Submit comments and provide input on FHFA Rules Open for Comment by clicking on Rulemaking and Federal Register.
Goal: Help restore confidence, enhance capacity to fulfill mission, and mitigate systemic risk that contributed directly to instability in financial markets.
MAINTAIN foreclosure prevention activities and credit availability, REDUCE taxpayer risk, and BUILD a new single-family securitization infrastructure. Read more in the 2016 Scorecard and Conservatorships Strategic Plan.
Plans and Reports
FHFA experts provide reliable data, including all states, about activity in the U.S. mortgage market through its House Price Index, Refinance Report, Foreclosure Prevention Report, and Performance Report.
HARP - the Home Affordable Refinance Program was created by FHFA specifically to help homeowners current on their mortgage payments, but underwater on their mortgages.
FHFA economists and policy experts provide reliable research and policy analysis about critical topics impacting the nation’s housing finance sector. Meet the experts...
Key Topics pages provide information about FHFA's work on a range of issues facing the nation and highlight the most relevant related news releases, reports, statements and web pages on the respective topics.
The Honorable Melvin L. Watt of Charlotte, NC sworn in on January 6th to a 5-year term as the first Senate-confirmed Director of FHFA.
Read more about Director Watt
Alleva joined the Office of Housing and Regulatory Policy (OHRP) in September 2016 as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Multifamily Housing Policy Branch. She analyzes multifamily policy and serves as an expert in affordable housing. Prior to joining FHFA, Alleva was a Presidential Appointee to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing Programs. In this role, Alleva managed HUD’s response to troubled asset portfolios, responded to Congressional inquiries and concerns, gave Congressional briefings, and served as a subject matter expert in Section 8 Assisted Housing. Alleva developed her multifamily expertise at HUD from 2011-2015, through her work writing key multifamily policy focused on affordable housing preservation, and creating a risk rating system for FHA’s 30,000 asset portfolio. In addition to her HUD experience, she spent a year as an origination pre-screen analyst for a multifamily lender, where she mastered Enterprise offerings and underwriting, and reviewed hundreds of potential deals for presentation to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Alleva holds a Bachelor of Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia and a Master of Community Planning specializing in Economic Development from the University of Cincinnati. Alleva served a two-year term of service in the U.S. Peace Corps from 2007-2009.
Douglas joined the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2015. He is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Duty to Serve Program. He works on the Agency’s policy team pertaining to the three core markets that encompass the Duty to Serve Program. Douglas is also responsible for leading the policy team related to the scoring and rating process for the Duty to Serve Program. Prior to joining the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Douglas worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in the division of Public and Indian Housing, the Federal Housing Administration and Ginnie Mae. Douglas received a J.D. as well as a B.A. in Finance from the University of Kentucky and joined federal service when he was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow.
Gray is the manager with overall responsibility for the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Duty to Serve Program in the Office of Housing and Community Investment. Gray joined FHFA in 2010. From 2010 until 2016, he was the manager of Counterparty Policy in the Office of Housing and Regulatory Policy (OHRP). Among the projects Gray led in OHRP were the Duty to Serve Rulemaking, Lender Placed Insurance initiative and the revision and consolidation of the Enterprises’ Private Mortgage Insurance Eligibility Requirements (PMIERs). Prior to FHFA, from 2000 to 2010, he led affordable housing programs at what is now Capital Impact Partners, then, the nonprofit affiliate of the National Cooperative Bank. In this role, Gray started a Ford Foundation-funded program, “Cornerstone Partnership” now known as Grounded Solutions Network. Prior to that, Gray was the Senior Advisor to former FHA Commissioners Retsinas and Apgar in their capacity as members of the Federal Housing Finance Board. Gray received a law degree from Vanderbilt University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hendrix College.
Maloney joined the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2016. She is a Program Analyst for the Duty to Serve Program. In this role, she is responsible for maintaining the organizational and management components of the program. Maloney is a certified project manager and is the primary liaison for Duty to Serve. Prior to joining the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Maloney worked for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. She received a B.A. in Economics from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University.
Rawal joined the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2016. He serves as a Policy Analyst and the Rural Market Specialist for the Duty to Serve Program. In this capacity, he leads the Agency’s analysis, engagement, and evaluation for the rural underserved market under the Duty to Serve program. Rawal also assists with additional aspects of the Duty to Serve Program, including the evaluation and rating process, public information releases, and elements of the affordable housing preservation market. Rawal received a B.A. in Plan II Honors and Government from the University of Texas at Austin.
Barman joined FHFA in February 2014 from Deloitte and Touche where he provided risk analysis for Ginnie Mae. Previously, he was a Research Economist at the National Association of Realtors. He has also worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Brookings Institution. He received his Bachelor's degree from U.C.L.A. He also holds Master's degrees from the University of Toledo and the London School of Economics. He has several publications in Real Estate Insights, as well as with the National Association of Realtors.
Bogin is responsible for developing historically-based shocks to several key market risk factors including interest rates, implied volatility, and option-adjusted spreads. These risk factor shocks will be incorporated into a proposed revision to the market risk based capital rule for the Federal Home Loan Banks. Alex has expertise in urban economics, applied econometrics, and financial modeling. Recent publications include “Generating Historically-Based Stress Scenarios Using Parsimonious Factorization” 2013; “No Base Left Behind: The Impact of Military Base Closures on Educational Expenditures and Outcomes” 2013; and “Winning Pays: High School Football Championships and Property Values” 2013. Alex joined FHFA in 2012 after graduating from Syracuse University with a Ph.D. in Economics.
Chung supports testing and modeling new risk based capital requirements using Quantitative Risk Management (QRM), a third party vendor system designed for enterprise risk management. Prior to FHFA, he worked at various organizations including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Barclays, focusing on fixed income capital markets and market risk management. He received a business degree from the University of Virginia with concentration of finance, economics and marketing.
Collender is responsible for monitoring Federal Reserve and Treasury Department support for the Enterprises during the conservatorships, certain aspects of Dodd Frank implementation and FHFA’s participation in the Financial Stability Oversight Council, analysis of legislative proposals to reform the housing finance system, and research related to financial stability or derivatives. His areas of interest include financial institutions and their regulation, derivatives, and financial market stability. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Doerner is responsible for House Price Index (HPI) production and related research. He brings a combination of practical and academic experiences that include being appointed as a Commissioner for the Prince George's County Planning Board, serving on the Hyattsville Planning Committee, and working in property appraisal and valuation for both state and county agencies in Florida. While earning his doctoral degree, in an effort to provide practical learning experiences for university students, he designed and taught classes on housing markets and land use regulations. Will earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Economics from Florida State University. He received his B.S. in Mathematics-Economics and Urban Studies at Furman University. He has published over a dozen articles in academic journals on a range of topics like finance, housing, property taxation, and policing. Several papers have received “best paper” recognitions from professional organizations and publishers.
Fuller is a responsible for managing research projects from data collection, validation and loading into QRM, 3rd party vendor behavioral model and term structure and other assumptions set-up and validation, resolution of IT/vendor issues, including debugging and RAM and disk space issues, and validation and analysis of vendor and proprietary FHFA model results. Debra also is responsible for documentation of aforementioned processes and writing of white papers and presentations. She has expertise in SAS, default/prepayment modeling, market risk, credit risk, and project management. Published work includes “Economic Impact Analysis of the Port of Tampa,” USDA white papers, FHFA Risk-based Capital Rule and an FHFA Countercyclical working paper. She has earned a BA International Relations/Spanish (University of South Florida), MS Economics (University of Florida), and was a Ph.D. Candidate ABD (University of Miami). Several FHFA awards, including the Director’s Award for work on principal forgiveness.
Hensel received her BA, MA, and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and specialized in finance and economics. She previously served as the Chief Economist for the Department of the Navy where she provided economic guidance on the defense industry and defense industrial base, housing, commodities and strategic materials, exchange rates, unemployment, interest rates, etc. Dr. Hensel was awarded the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Medal in 2013 by the Department of Defense. She has served as the Pentagon Scholar in Residence, and as Professor of Industry and Business at National Defense University. She was extensively involved in various aspects of the Undersecretary of Defense (AT&L)’s Better Buying Power Initiative and led several of the sub-initiatives. She also served on the faculty of the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU), and the US Naval Postgraduate School, as well as taught at Harvard University. In the private sector, Dr. Hensel previously served as Senior Manager and Chief Economist for Ernst & Young’s litigation advisory group, managing economist for the New York City office of the Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG), and an economist in the economic consulting arm of Marsh & McLennan. Dr. Hensel has written over 50 articles and research reports. She has published in journals such as the International Journal of Managerial Finance, the Review of Financial Economics, Business Economics, the European Financial Management Journal, the Journal of Financial Transformation, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, etc. She has served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Business Economists (NABE) and the National Economists Club (NEC) and has served as the Chair of the NABE Industry Survey and the Chair of the NABE Outlook Survey. Dr. Hensel is an elected member of NBEIC and of the Conference of Business Economists, both of which are composed of the top economists in the US, and is a member of the Harvard Industrial Economists Group. Dr. Hensel has given seminars at a number of institutions and has appeared on CNBC, PBS, Fox Business TV, Voice of America, and Reuters TV, as well as has conducted a variety of radio interviews on ABC, CBS, NPR, Wall Street Journal Radio, Bloomberg Radio, AP, etc.
Lam is an expert on loan default/prepayment models, mortgage underwriting standards, loan modifications, and program evaluation. Joined FHFA three years ago, Ken has recently completed a study quantifying the relationship between down payment requirements and performance of mortgages in the FHA and GSE segments of the market. He is currently working on a project examining the changes in underwriting regime and access to mortgage credit after the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Prior to FHFA, Ken worked for 10+ years at the consulting firm Abt Associates, where he conducted research on Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) and FHA’s American Dream Downpayment Initiative (ADDI), and other HUD programs. He received his M.P.P. in public policy and econometrics and his B.S in. Economics-Math, as well as his B.A. Political Science, from University of Minnesota. His recent publication on "Impacts of Down Payment Underwriting Standards on Loan Performance – Evidence from the GSEs and FHA portfolios” is an FHFA working paper which is on the FHFA website.
Larson has established a diverse portfolio of high quality research, which includes publications in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences since completing his Ph.D. in 2011 at the George Washington University. At FHFA, he serves as an expert in house price indices, urban and regional economics, and the economics of natural disasters. Prior to his arrival, he worked at the Washington Post in the Research and Analytics department, and at the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Office of the Chief Statistician. He is an active member of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, the Regional Science Association, and the Urban Economics Association.
Since completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1998, Leventis has worked as an empirical microeconomist. He began his career in litigation consulting, assisting in the preparation of expert reports on antitrust matters and contract disputes. Over the last nine years, he has served as an economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he has had production and development responsibilities associated with the House Price Index (HPI), a widely-used series of indexes showing real estate price trends in the U.S., Census Divisions, states, and metropolitan areas. He closely monitors market conditions, both as measured in the HPI as well as in other major house price metrics. In addition to publishing articles that have reconciled the FHFA and S&P/Case-Shiller home price metrics, he has also released reports analyzing appraisal bias, the effects of home quality improvements on price indexes, and heterogeneity in price trends by financing type. His most recent research has been aimed at quantifying the influence of foreclosures and distressed sales on house price measures. He is also conducting research on the impact of second mortgages on the performance of first liens and on household financial outcomes.
Manchester has been the lead staff person for the preparation of FHFA's Annual Housing Reports, submitted to Congress in October each year. He has also been the lead on the preparation of FHFA's annual housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and has worked on matters related to mission regulation of the Federal Home Loan Banks. Previously he served as Director of the Financial Institutions Regulations Division in the Office of Policy Development and Research at HUD, and prior to that he worked at the Office of Thrift Supervision. Paul has a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota. Following receipt of his Ph.D., he taught economics at Mary Washington College and the Catholic University of America, and subsequently worked as a senior economist with the Joint Economic Committee of Congress for eleven years.
Patrabansh specializes in researching mortgage origination and refinancing; mortgage delinquency, foreclosure and property disposition; and foreclosure prevention and homeownership retention. He has been at FHFA since 2011 and has worked on policies related to HARP, REO disposition and non-performing loans (NPL). He has recently performed research on the profiles of first-time homebuyers, literature on foreclosure discount, and effects of monetary policy on mortgage rates. Prior to joining FHFA, he was a Center Co-Director and Senior Associate at Abt Associates, a government research and consulting firm. There he specialized in rigorous program evaluation and policy research and conducted research studies on housing policy and housing finance for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including studies of the Enterprises and FHA. He also led data and evaluation projects for HUD, the Census Bureau and Food and Nutrition Services. He holds an M.P.P. specializing in econometrics, finance and evaluation from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Grinnell College.
Polkovnichenko conducts research on the effects of new capital requirements as applicable to the Federal Home Loan Banks. Recently she has been involved in the research project analyzing the effect of any regional aggregation bias in applying House Price Index shocks to countercyclical stress tests used to set credit risk based capital requirements. She has also worked on estimating prepayment model error, which is one of the potential inputs in the new risk based capital requirements for market risk. Before joining FHFA, she was a finance instructor at the University of Minnesota and a senior lecturer in finance at the University of Texas at Dallas. Nataliya received a Ph.D. in Business Administration with specialization in finance from the University of Minnesota and an M.S. degree in mathematics and mechanics from Moscow State University.
Prendergast focuses on guarantee-fee policy and implementation, insurance related risk-transfer transactions, and legislative analysis. Prior to joining FHFA, he worked at Securities Litigation and Consulting Group in Fairfax, Virginia where he testified as an expert witness in FINRA arbitrations involving complex securities. Prior to that, he was a Principal and Director of Mortgage Research at Smith Breeden Associates in Durham, North Carolina where he worked for 11 years as a member of the Investment Management Group. He holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Michigan Business School and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University.
Roderer is responsible for the Annual Guarantee Fee Report and the Monthly Interest Rate Survey. Over the last four years he has worked extensively on finding the appropriate level of guarantee fees. He has been with the FHFA and FHFB for 11 years in the Office of Policy Analysis & Research and the Division of Bank Regulation. Before that he worked for the OCC for ten years, in Economics and Compliance. He has a B.A. in Mathematics from Macalester College.
Shen focuses on credit risk transfer transactions and housing policy. He recently returned from a detail assignment to the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, where he assisted with housing finance reform legislation. Before joining FHFA in 2012, he served at the Department of the Treasury and at the U. S. Senate’s Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP. Earlier, he spent five years at HUD, where he founded and led a new office charged with rehabilitating public housing authorities in federal receivership, and later served as the Senior Advisor to the President of Ginnie Mae. Prior to HUD, he worked in commercial real estate finance and development at the financial services firm Legg Mason. He holds a B.A. in government from University of Virginia and a Master of Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, with a curriculum that combined training in urban planning at its School of Design and real estate finance at its Wharton School.
Shui joined FHFA as a junior Economist after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Economics in 2016. During her graduate study, she has worked on topics in behavior economics and real estate economics with applications in real estate brokerage service. Her recent research mainly focuses on the economic implications of real estate appraisals and geographic variations of add-on value of house hedonics.
Smith supervises a research team focused on developing new risk based capital requirements for credit, market, and operational risk that will be applicable to the Federal Home Loan Banks and any successors to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Recently, he has co-authored papers that present a methodology to implement a countercyclical capital regime applicable to credit risk for mortgage assets. Previously, he worked on capital and mortgage purchase program issues for both the Federal Housing Finance Board and Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, predecessor agencies to FHFA. He began government service at GAO working on a wide variety of issues. He has also taught economics at Arizona State, George Mason and Johns Hopkins Universities. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia.
Sugarman has more than 25 years of experience in federal housing finance programs. His recent work has focused on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee fee policy analysis of housing finance reform legislation, and Dodd-Frank implementation (risk retention rule). Prior to joining OFHEO (one of FHFA’s predecessor agencies), he worked at HUD on the FHA and Ginnie Mae programs. He earned his B.A. in Quantitative Studies at Johns Hopkins. When not in the office, he enjoys kayaking on the South River.
Avery heads a new inter-agency effort at FHFA designed to create a comprehensive residential mortgage database to better serve supervisory and policy concerns. He joined FHFA after retiring as a Senior Economist from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the fall of 2012. Previously he had held positions as a Professor at Cornell University and as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His work at the Federal Reserve focused on supervisory issues related to community affairs and bank supervision. He was a coauthor of a number of studies in these areas including the Federal Reserve’s Congressional Report on Disparate impact in Credit Scoring, and Federal Reserve Bulletin articles on the 2004 through 2011 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data and revisions to the Community Reinvestment Act in 2005. He was also one of the founders of the tri-annual Survey of Consumer Finances and designed the loan sampling systems used for the Federal Reserve’s examinations of small bank safety and soundness and for large syndicated loans. He has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Keith specializes in data management and analysis using SAS® software with an emphasis on Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s single-family and multifamily mortgage loans reported towards their affordable housing goals. He is an expert in Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, Census tract demographic data, and FHFA’s Enterprise Public Use Database. He spent 17 years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development primarily with the Office of Policy Development and Research in the Financial Institutions Regulation Division before transferring to FHFA in 2009. He has a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Mohamed joined the National Mortgage Database team from the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) where he had worked for 13 years. He has over 20 years of solid technical expertise in statistical software, applications development, data analysis, and applied economic research. During his tenure with the Office of Policy Development & Research, Mohamed supported HUD’s mission regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until that responsibility was transferred to FHFA. Afterward, he continued as lead architect and developer in vital HUD projects including the analyses of Federal Housing Administration, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Home Affordable Modification Program, Mortgage Loan Performance, and McDash data, and the development of HUD’s Housing Scorecard. He also led HUD’s implementation of the agency-wide SAS® Enterprise Business Intelligence System that supported over 300 HUD SAS users. Mohamed was author and coauthor in papers covering the practical implementation of time series, applications of neural networks, program planning and evaluation, and international development. He received a M.S. from the University of Maryland, and a M.S. and a Ph.D. from Iowa State University.
Pafenberg has more than 40 years of experience as a housing economist, specializing in mortgage finance. Pafenberg’s areas of expertise include the structure of the primary and secondary mortgage markets, single-family and multi-family housing programs, underwriting standards, interest and credit risk, and operational risk metrics and analysis. Prior to his current position at FHFA, Pafenberg was a Senior Policy Analyst with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), Director of Real Estate Finance Research at the National Association of Realtors, Housing Economist at Freddie Mac, and Economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He has a B.S. from George Mason University and a M.S. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Schultz is part of the team developing the National Mortgage Database and is also responsible for developing projections of future single-family mortgage market affordability levels to support FHFA’s oversight of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac annual housing goals. He joined FHFA in 2009 when the housing goal responsibility was transferred from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he had worked in the Office of Policy Development and Research for 12 years and the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity for 2 years. His work at HUD focused on developing regulations and evaluating the performance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac toward the statutorily required housing goals. Prior to working for the Federal Government, he held the position of Chief Economist for the Missouri Department of Insurance where he headed the Statistics Section which is responsible for collecting and analyzing data on underwriting and losses paid for all lines of insurance. His research focuses on affordable housing and mortgage market issues as well as property insurance as it relates to affordable housing and community development. He has a B.S. in Economics from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in Economics/Finance from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Wood is a member of the project team developing the National Mortgage Database. Prior to joining FHFA she worked at TransUnion supporting their mortgage products and analytical solutions as Director of Mortgage Analytics. Over the course of her 20 year career, she has held various positions in credit risk modeling and analytics in the Federal government, private sector, and the secondary mortgage market agencies. These have included positions as a senior risk examiner at FHFA; Senior Director of Risk Analysis, Pricing and Portfolio Management at Freddie Mac; and Financial Economist at Fannie Mae. Wood has extensive expertise in single-family and multifamily credit risk modeling and analytics. She is also an experienced SAS® programmer. Wood has a B.A. and M.B.A. from Lehigh University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in Consumer Economics and Housing.
