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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nextrade! who wrote (17178)	2/11/2004 7:01:58 PM
From: nextrade!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

UPDATE - Fannie Mae, lenders aim to revive US mobile homes Tuesday February 10, 5:23 pm ET By Richard Leong biz.yahoo.com (Updates stock prices. clarifies Fannie Mae's exposure in paragraph 5) NEW YORK , Feb 10 (Reuters) - Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM - News) and a consortium of lenders aim to revive a U.S. manufactured housing industry that has been battered in recent years by high loan defaults and a bloated inventory of repossessed homes. ADVERTISEMENT "We want to strengthen the market for manufactured housing financing, and eliminate predatory and anti-consumer features that have contributed to instability in the marketplace over time," Fannie Mae Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines said on Tuesday in a statement. Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of U.S. home loans, and the lending group will make it more affordable to get a mortgage to buy a manufactured home, the company said. A consumer could get 30-year financing for such a home with down payments as low as 5 percent. Last June, Fannie Mae instituted a requirement for a down payment of at least 10 percent on 30-year loans for manufactured homes. In addition to funding manufactured housing loans, Fannie Mae holds bonds or asset-backed securities (ABS) supported by these loans. At the end of the 2003 third quarter, Fannie Mae owned $8.8 billion of manufactured housing loans in ABS issued primarily by the former finance unit of Conseco Inc., according to Fannie Mae spokesman Alfred King. Manufactured housing encompasses modular, mobile and other types of prefabricated homes. Because their cost is low compared with standard housing, they tend to attract elderly and low-income buyers. These buyers tend be riskier borrowers because of their limited income. High loan losses had forced some once high-flying manufactured home lenders like Conseco Finance and makers like Oakwood Home Corp. (OTC BB:OKWHQ.OB - News) into bankruptcy. According to the U.S. Census, shipments of new manufactured homes last year totaled 130,900 units, down from 2002's 168,500 and an industry peak of 373,100 in 1998. The nine lenders in this venture are AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, Flagstar Bank, GMAC Manufactured Housing, Huntington Mortgage Group, Origen Financial, RBC Mortgage, 21st Mortgage, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Washington Mutual (NYSE:WM - News). These companies will screen borrowers and make the loans. Fannie Mae will purchase the loans from the lenders. This manufactured housing plan, which was reported earlier in The Wall Street Journal, sent the stocks of manufactured home producers sharply higher, several to new 52-week highs. For example, shares of Champion Enterprises Inc. (NYSE:CHB - News) jumped $2.17, or 31.5 percent, to $9.06, and shares of Fleetwood Enterprises (NYSE:FLE - News) shot up $1.92, or 15.2 percent, to $14.52 on Tuesday, both on the New York Stock Exchange (News - Websites) . Further, Fannie Mae said it plans to work with its lender partners over the next year to develop a pilot program to save consumers at least 10 percent of the cost of buying and financing a manufactured home.