investor-owned corporation chartered by Congress in 1970 to create a secondary market for conventional mortgage loans- loans not backed or guaranteed by a government agency-and promote affordable home ownership. Freddie Mac purchases single-family and multifamily mortgage loans (called conforming loans) that have an original principal amount not greater than the conforming loan ceiling. An early pioneer in mortgage securitization, Freddie Mac issued the first conventional mortgage pass-through certificate (a type of mortgage security that pays monthly principal and interest payments from the underlying mortgage loan pool) in 1971 and the first Collateralized Mortgage Obligation in 1983.
Originally owned by the nation's savings and loan associations (then part of the Federal Home Loan Bank System), Freddie Mac became a public corporation in 1989, the year the savings and loan industry restructured under the Financial Institutions Recovery and Enforcement Act. The company's legal name is still the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, but it conducts business as Freddie Mac.
- nickname for Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC).
- mortgage-backed securities, issued in minimum denominations of $25,000, that are packaged, guaranteed, and sold by the FHLMC. mortgage-backed securities, issued in minimum denominations of $25,000, that are packaged, guaranteed, and sold to investors.
nickname for Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.
