Ginnie Mae’s mortgage-backed securities portfolio has reached a record level. Just four years after Ginnie’s portfolio reached $1 trillion, the corporation’s portfolio now stands at more than $1.5 trillion.
That marks an extraordinarily rapid growth, considering that it took 42 years — from the corporation’s founding in 1968 to 2010 — to reach $1 trillion in unpaid principal balance.
Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer said that the rapid growth demonstrates the effectiveness of Ginnie’s “unique” business model. “Our role is critical because our unique business model – a public/private partnership – provides a safe, effective and government-backed channel for the flow of capital for U.S. mortgages, significantly limiting risks to the taxpayer and providing much needed capital for the government,” Tozer said.
The vast majority of the $1.5 trillion in unpaid balance is comprised of Ginnie Mae II single-family pools. Those pools, which include $48 billion in home equity conversion MBSs, make up $1.05 trillion of the total. Ginnie Mae I pools total $451 million. Multifamily pools represent more than $85 billion.
There are now more than 9.1 million government-backed mortgage loans in Ginnie’s portfolio.
“This extraordinary growth, increasing our portfolio of outstanding MBS over 30% just the last four years, is evidence that Ginnie Mae’s guarantee is playing an increasing role in stabilizing the secondary market, which is crucial to the housing recovery and the overall economy,” Tozer added.
According to Ginnie, the corporation has generated a profit for the U.S. government for 20 consecutive years. “Investors place a premium value on Ginnie Mae’s full faith and credit guaranty, which helps ensure that the corporation can maintain a consistent pool of funding for government mortgages,” the corporation said in a release announcing the milestone.
“Ginnie Mae’s role in the secondary market supports the economic stabilization efforts of Congress and the Administration by making it possible for financial institutions to continue mortgage lending.”
Mary Kinney, Ginnie’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, added, “It’s not just the size of our portfolio, but also our consistently strong market share over the last few years, from less than 10% before the economic crisis, to a current share of more than 30%, that demonstrates the unique value the housing finance system places in the Ginnie Mae MBS.”
