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In the Federal Reserve Board's most recent survey of loan officers, bankers have a host of concerns keeping them away from originating loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
April 30
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are the equivalent of tabloid darlings in the mortgage industry, according to new polling data.
The government-sponsored enterprises "were in the news during the whole home foreclosure crisis. They were the Kim and Khloe Kardashian. They were names that were easy to recognize, there was lots of press about it, and there was enough repetition over time that the names penetrate," Dave Sackett, a partner at Republican polling firm The Tarrance Group, said during a presentation at a housing conference on Tuesday.
That helps explain why the vast majority of likely voters said they recognized the names of both mortgage giants, according to a survey The Tarrance Group conducted on behalf of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars earlier this month.
"People recognize these names, they're branded," he said.
91% of respondents said they had heard of Fannie Mae.
"Fannie Mae has a higher name ID than Joe Biden does … [and] three times the name ID that John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid does," Sackett noted.
86% of those surveyed had also heard of Freddie Mac.
"And they're not confusing this with a hamburger place," Sackett joked.
But despite their high name recognition, about half of respondents rated their opinion of the GSEs as unfavorable, according to the poll.
"If this was a politician, they wouldn't get elected if they cured cancer three days before Election Day," Sackett said.
For voters, "these are entities that are horribly broken and need to be fixed or changed or altered in some way, before voters will have any kind of level of confidence in them," he added.
Sacket spoke at a housing conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center.
