Fannie Mae has announced that Larry H. Dale is stepping aside as its affordable-housing chief at the end of this year to become head of a new venture fund within the company that will invest in hard-to-finance projects.
The company has hired a senior vice president to take over Mr. Dale's responsibility for multifamily lending and investment. It is conducting a search for someone to replace Mr. Dale as head of what it calls its National Housing Impact Division.
The job carries responsibility for developing affordable-housing products, managing the company's community lending activities, and overseeing the company's investments in mortgage revenue bonds.
Mr. Dale, who also served as Fannie Mae's senior affordable-housing spokesman and strategist, has had high visibility in a politically sensitive area of the company. It is unclear whether these responsibilities will be assumed by the new director.
Mr. Dale's new task, far less visible than his old one, will be to develop the venture fund into a significant source of private capital for affordable housing, the company said.
David Jeffers, a Fannie Mae spokesman, said the fund's initial capitalization of $100 million is large for a start-up. Fannie sees the fund, which will be profit seeking, as falling between its regular business activities and its charitable foundation.
The new executive for multifamily lending and investment is Louis W. Hoyes, who was previously managing director of the residential segment of Citicorp's real estate business in North America. As such, he was product director for the development and marketing of the company's multifamily tax-exempt housing securitization product.
Earlier he held a number of other positions at the bank related to real estate and risk management.
Before he joined Citicorp in 1973, Mr. Hoyes worked for Merrill Lynch & Co.
"Sixteen months ago, we pledged to transform the housing finance system into one that works for every American," said James A. Johnson, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive, in a press release.
"Since that time, we've made tremendous progress in financing homeownership and affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families."
Mr. Dale commented, "The Fannie Mae Housing Investment Fund is an important new means by which Fannie Mae can do even more to help put people into decent homes they own or rent."
