Fannie Mae's FINE LINE.

The Fannie Mae brand is becoming as well known as Citibank or Bank of America. What some lenders want to know is, Why? Why does a federally chartered enterprise, launched to serve in the shadows of the secondary market need such a high media profile?

A YOUNG AFRICAN-AMERICAN COUPLE

"Rain?" he asks. "Not just any rain--it's our rain, on our roof," she says.

Soft piano music plays as the announcer says--just loud enough not to disturb the couple--"Each year, millions of people spend their first night in a home of their own. ... Call the Fannie Mae Foundation for a free guide to help put you on the path to homeownership."

It's only one of several slick television advertisements designed for the Fannie Mae Foundation by Austin, Texas--based GSD&M Advertising. The ad has elegant production, beautiful yet accessible actors and a simple message: Shopping for a home? Call Fannie Mae. In the world of marketing, it's called building name brand recognition. It's driving some mortgage bankers to distraction.

"I wish they wouldn't," says Glenn Wertheim, president of Charter Mortgage Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like others in his industry Wertheim, a primary lender, sees himself as a customer to Fannie Mae, with Fannie being a secondary market lender by reason of its charter.

"They are certainly not listening to their customers as to what they should or should not be doing," Wertheim says. "What they're doing makes no sense if they plan to stay constrained in the secondary market. It begs the question: Who do they think their customers really are?"

Who, indeed. In the early 1990s, Fannie Mae surveys revealed an untapped market. Research discovered that many potential U.S. homebuyers, of low and moderate incomes--especially minorities--lacked the information they needed to even consider themselves potential homeowners. "That was the impetus for first the corporation and then the foundation to begin its consumer outreach advertising campaign," says John Buckley, senior vice president for communications at Fannie Mae. "Since that effort began in 1993, more than 7 million consumers have gotten information from Fannie Mae or the Fannie Mae Foundation."