Mortgage Giants at a Crossroads: Would Re-Privatization of Freddie & Fannie Help or Hurt Housing?

There is one high-stakes question dominating US housing finance today: will Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) which have long been the backbone of America’s mortgage markets, exit conservatorship? Conservatorship is an obscure legal status where the government controls the companies instead of their stockholders and, if Fannie and Freddie exit, what could that mean for the mortgage market, taxpayers, and homebuyers?

Don Layton, former CEO of Freddie Mac and former Senior Industry Fellow at the Center, and JCHS Managing Director Chris Herbert will walk through how we got here, why the GSEs have long faced an identity crisis, and what’s at stake in the push to privatize that, if done poorly, could make mortgages much more expensive and much less readily available.

Co-sponsored by the Building Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School and the Infrastructure & Housing Club at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.