Fannie Mae said Friday that it lost $3.46 billion during the third quarter, as it paid a $2.12 billion dividend payment to the government.
The dividend payment contributed in large part to a $2.4 billion deficit at the government-sponsored enterprise at the end of the quarter. As such, Fannie said it would request an additional $2.5 billion from the Treasury Department.
The loss was slightly greater than the $3.13 billion loss in the second quarter, but a far cry from the nearly $20 billion loss a year earlier.
Credit-related expenses, including provisions for future loan losses and foreclosed property expenses, totaled $5.56 billion, down sharply from $21.96 billion in the third quarter of 2009, but up slightly from $4.85 billion in the second quarter, due in part to increased acquisitions of foreclosed properties, Fannie said.
Fannie had little to say about the current industrywide foreclosure-documentation scandal beyond that it "expects the foreclosure pause will likely negatively affect its serious delinquency rates, credit-related expenses, credit losses, and foreclosure timelines" and that "it cannot yet predict the extent of the impact."
The serious delinquency rate on single-family residential loans in Fannie's portfolio stood at 4.56% at the end of the quarter, compared with 4.72% in the same period last year.
Year to date, Fannie has purchased or guaranteed $613 billion of mortgage loans, including about $195 billion in delinquent loans it purchased from its single-family mortgage-backed securities trusts.
In reporting its third-quarter results Wednesday, Fannie's smaller rival Freddie Mac said it lost $4.07 billion in the period, after a $1.6 billion dividend payment to the government. That compared with a loss of $6.70 billion a year earlier. Freddie said it would request an additional $100 million in funds from the Treasury to plug a deficit.
Combined the GSEs have cost the government $148 billion. Estimates for future costs to the Treasury range from between $73 billion and $215 billion.
Like Freddie, Fannie said repurchase requests remained high during the third quarter. As of Sept. 30, there was $7.7 billion of outstanding repurchase requests, of which more than a third had been outstanding for more than four months. More than half of the outstanding repurchase requests had been made to just one servicer, Fannie said. Lenders repurchased or reimbursed Fannie for losses on about $1.6 billion of loans during the period, the GSE said.
