Fannie Mae provided nearly $70 billion, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) volume cap, in financing to support the multifamily market in 2021. In addition, multifamily affordable housing funding increased more than 23% last year, marking the highest volume in the history of the 33-year-old Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS) program.

“We are pleased to have increased our support of multifamily affordable housing in a year when the need for affordable housing options became more acute,” said Michele Evans, executive vice president and head of multifamily at Fannie Mae. “Working with our DUS lenders, we will continue to focus on preserving and expanding the supply of affordable housing, as well as financing quality green and sustainable rental units. We will also ensure that resources remain available for renters as our economy and financial markets cope with pandemic-related disruptions.”

Multifamily affordable housing volumes came in at $9.6 billion last year, up from $7.8 billion in 2020. Green finance volume also increased 3.6% from the prior year to $13.5 billion, helping the government-sponsored enterprise grow its Multifamily Green MBS issuance to more than $100 billion in 2021.

Fannie Mae Multifamily’s highlights for 2021 include:

  • Affordable Housing Loans: $11 billion, including the $9.6 billion in multifamily affordable housing for rent-restricted properties and properties receiving other federal and state subsidies and $1.4 billion for properties with rent restrictions between 60% and 80% of the area median income (AMI);
  • Small Loans: $5.4 billion;
  • Structured Transactions: $5.7 billion;
  • Manufactured Housing Community Loans: $3.3 billion;
  • Student Housing Loans: $0.9 billion; and
  • Seniors Housing Loans: $0.8 billion.

Walker & Dunlop topped the list of Fannie Mae DUS lenders for the highest business volumes in 2021, followed by CBRE, Berkadia, Wells Fargo, and Newmark. Greystone, JLL, Arbor, Capital One, and KeyBank round out the top 10. For multifamily affordable housing in 2021, Wells Fargo led the list, followed by Grandbridge, CBRE, Berkadia, and Walker & Dunlop.

“We want to thank our DUS lenders for helping us support the multifamily market in another challenging year,” said Rob Levin, senior vice president of multifamily customer engagement at Fannie Mae. “Together with our lenders we have been able to ensure there is adequate liquidity in all multifamily markets at all times, and we look forward to working with our lender partners in 2022.”

For 2022, the FHFA has set the multifamily loan caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at $78 billion. The caps include the 50% mission-driven requirement, but the support for units affordable at 60% of the AMI has increased from 20% of volume in 2021 to 25% this year.