Open-Source Loan-Level Analysis of Fannie and Freddie

Re:Open-Source Loan-Level Analysis of Fannie and Freddie by omarish on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:37PM (#9687736)

Not sure what you mean by "dominate", but there's $13 trillion in mortgage debt outstanding as of Q4 2014, $5T of that is held by federal agencies, and $4.5T is held by financial institutions [1]. So it's actually a much bigger business than you imagine.

> How exactly anyone expects to make money ... and with low recovery percentages if the security needs to be seized is beyond me

which is probably why you're not a mortgage banker :).

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutst...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Open-Source Loan-Level Analysis of Fannie and Freddie by bradleyjg on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:51PM (#9687828)

>which is probably why you're not a mortgage banker :).

If you take a look at just how well mortgage bankers have done over the past 50 years, I'm not convinced they create any value over the course of a cycle for their employers. Indeed they seem especially prone to blowing up said employers every 15 years or so.

Picking up nickels in front of steam roller doesn't seem like a great business model to me. In fact, it looks like a pretty reliable indicator of a principal-agent problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]