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
The National Mortgage Database project is a multi-year project being jointly undertaken by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The project is designed to provide a rich source of information about the U.S. mortgage market based on a five percent sample of residential mortgages. It has two primary components: (1) the National Mortgage Database (NMDB) and (2) the quarterly National Survey of Mortgage Originations (NSMO) [1]. A third component, the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers (ASMB) is currently under development.
The NMDB will enable FHFA to meet the statutory requirements of section 1324(c) of the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, as amended by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, to conduct a monthly mortgage market survey. Specifically, FHFA must, through a survey of the mortgage market, collect data on the characteristics of individual mortgages, including those eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and those that are not, and including subprime and nontraditional mortgages. In addition, FHFA must collect information on the creditworthiness of borrowers, including a determination of whether subprime and nontraditional borrowers would have qualified for prime lending. [2]
For CFPB, the NMDB project will support policymaking and research efforts and help identify and understand emerging mortgage and housing market trends. The CFPB expects to use the NMDB, among other purposes, in support of the market monitoring called for by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, including understanding how mortgage debt affects consumers and for retrospective rule review required by the statute.
National Mortgage Database Technical Report 1.1 (updated 12/22/2016) is designed to provide users of the NMDB data with background on the development of the database, as well as an assessment of the quality of its data.
National Mortgage Database Technical Report 2.1 (updated 12/22/2016) provides background details on how the NSMO was developed.
Information in the database will not identify any individual and we have put safeguards in place to ensure that information in the database is handled in accordance with federal privacy laws and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The database will be comprehensive, and there are many possibilities for how it may be used. Some examples include:
Because the data goes back to 1998, the database can be used to assess the causes of the recent subprime crisis.
The database will allow the agencies to monitor volume and performance of products in the mortgage market and help regulators to identify potential problems or new risks.
The database will provide detailed mortgage loan performance information including whether payments are made on-time, as well as information regarding loan modifications, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. This will help policy makers better understand how various products are being used and how they are performing.
The database can be used to evaluate the efficacy and potential impact of counseling programs.
The database will include a voluntary survey component that measures variables such as borrowers’ expectations, knowledge, and financial circumstances. These data can be used to analyze the suitability of borrowers’ mortgage choices and identify predatory lending. Read more about the National Survey of Mortgage Originations.
The database will provide information on mortgage access and mortgage terms for low-income borrowers and communities faster than data required by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, or HMDA. Currently, HMDA data become available in September of the year following the originations.
The database can be used by policy makers, researchers, and regulators to improve prepayment and default modeling. For example, survey information on “trigger events” coupled with house-price estimates can be used to examine the role of these factors in mortgage default. Data may also be used to implement stress-test scenarios for the entire national mortgage market.
The database will include information about:
loan performance from origination to termination;
loan terms;
property value and characteristics;
membership in federal loan programs;
sale in the secondary mortgage market; and
information on all loan cosigners, including second liens, other past and present mortgages, and credit scores from one year before origination to one year after termination.
NMDB Technical Report 3.1 (updated 12/22/2016)
NMDB Technical Report 2.1 (updated 12/22/2016)
NMDB Technical Report 1.1 (updated 12/22/2016)
NMDB Notice of Revisions to Existing System of Records (8/28/2015)
NMDB Update (8/1/2014)
NMDB Notice of Revisions to Existing System of Records (4/16/2014)
NMDB Privacy Impact Assessment (11/6/2013)
NMDB Notice of Proposed Establishment of New System of Records (12/10/2012)
NMDB News Release (11/1/2012)
NMDB Privacy Impact Assessment (9/17/2012)
[1] The National Survey of Mortgage Originations was originally called the National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers. The name of the survey was changed to avoid confusion with the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, effective May 9, 2016.
[2] FHFA interprets the NMDB project as a whole, including the NSMO, as the “survey” required by the Safety and Soundness Act. The statutory requirement is for a monthly survey. Core inputs to the NMDB, such as a regular refresh of credit-bureau data, occur monthly, though the NSMO does not.
