Apartment lending took off last year at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., with the volume of multifamily activity leaping by nearly a third. Delinquency also improved.
Freddie Mac reported Thursday that multifamily loan purchases and bond guarantees totaled $20.3 billion during 2011.
Activity jumped from $15.4 billion the previous year.
Refinance share of the latest period’s activity was 58 percent, while 35 percent was for acquisitions and 5 percent was new construction. The rest was rehabilitation.
Conventional programs accounted for $19 billion of last year’s activity — an all-time high.
Freddie said that a record $16.5 billion of 2011 production was handled through the Capital Markets Execution program.
David Brickman, senior vice president of multifamily at the McLean, Va.-based lender, predicted “robust growth in the multifamily market” as a result of solid fundamentals, demographics, low interest rates and strong capital flows into the sector.
“Investor interest in our securitizations continues to grow,” Brickman added. “We are a regular issuer and have leveraged private capital in the multifamily debt and mortgage markets.”
Freddie previously reported that multifamily delinquency of at least 60 days was 0.22 percent as of Dec. 31, 2011, lower than 0.28 percent a year earlier.
The secondary lender said that it provided financing for around 1,300 properties last year with approximately 321,000 units.
Multifamily market share at Freddie was 29 percent in 2011.
