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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.

Hedge funds that profited on residential mortgage debt after the financial crisis such as Pine River Capital Management and Canyon Partners are trimming their bets as prices rise, Bloomberg News reported today. Gorelick Brothers Capital is also exiting investments in both uninsured and government-backed home loan securities. The firm is seeking higher returns by raising a private equity fund to buy single-family rental houses, said Rael Gorelick, a co-founder of the firm. Hedge funds that took a risk on distressed mortgage debt after the 2008 housing crash have had robust returns. Canyon Partners made $7 billion on non-agency securities in the decade before and after the financial crisis. Now these firms see dwindling opportunities as investors crowd into the market and issuance declines, pushing up prices of the non-agency debt.

Exactly 142,462 homes actively in the foreclosure process had been vacated by the homeowners prior to the bank repossessing the property, representing 25 percent of all active foreclosures, as of the end of January 2015, Housingwire.com reported today. That’s the latest according to the first quarter 2015 Zombie Foreclosure Report from RealtyTrac. The total number of zombie foreclosures was down 6 percent from a year ago, but the 25 percent share of total foreclosures represented by zombie foreclosures was up from 21 percent a year ago. Despite a 35 percent decrease in zombie foreclosures compared to a year ago, Florida had the highest number of any state with 35,903 — down from 54,908 in the first quarter of 2014. Zombie foreclosures accounted for 26 percent of all foreclosures in Florida. Zombie foreclosures increased 109 percent from a year ago in New Jersey, and the state posted the second highest total of any state with 17,983 — 23 percent of all properties in foreclosure.