Operating in the shadow of Freddie Mac’s business as America’s second-largest guarantor of home loans, the company’s unit serving apartment landlords is booming as borrowers take advantage of looser lending terms, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The mortgage company underwrote $21.2 billion of debt on apartment buildings in the second half of 2014, triple the total in the first six months. The surge meant the McLean, Va.-based lender almost surpassed the larger Fannie Mae last year to become the biggest provider of U.S. apartment financing, following changes by the agency that oversees both companies. Melvin L. Watt, who took over as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency last year, is rolling back policies aimed at shrinking the government-controlled finance companies, letting Freddie Mac push into segments of multifamily lending that had been off limits. That’s helping bolster demand for apartment buildings, already the hottest part of the commercial real estate market, as values rise to a point of possible overinflation.
