Freddie Mac is a congressionally chartered institution that buys mortgages from lenders and resells them as securities on the secondary mortgage market.
Freddie Mac was created to help stabilize the US mortgage markets.
The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) are the two dominant entities in the secondary residential mortgage markets of the United States. They are an important and prominent part of a larger mosaic of extensive efforts by governments at all levels to encourage the production and consumption of housing.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the only two Fortune 500 companies that are not required to inform the public about any financial difficulties that they may be having. In the event that there was some sort of financial collapse within either of these companies, U.S. taxpayers could be held responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in outstanding debts.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control about 90 percent of the nation's secondary mortgage market.
