Fannie & Freddie Christmas Gift: No Foreclosures (FNM, FRE)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 17, 5:03PM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

It seems that Uncle Sam does not want to be the Grinch this Christmas and is giving a gift of no foreclosures during the holidays. At least its GSE mortgage lenders in government conservatorship, Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), both announced today that they are not going to evict homeowners during the Christmas holiday season. Both companies have ordered its eviction attorneys to suspend all evictions involving foreclosed occupied single family properties with Fannie-owned or Freddie-owned mortgages during December 19, 2009 to January 3, 2010.

The Fannie Mae release noted, “All owner-occupants and tenants living in foreclosed properties the company holds will not be subject to evictions during the holiday time frame. The company will also support the efforts of the servicers it works with that are taking similar actions…. No family should have to face the prospect of being evicted during the holiday season.”

The Freddie Mac release noted, “If the property is occupied, our attorneys will halt the eviction during this holiday moratorium. In these extraordinary times, we want to provide a greater measure of certainty to these families during the holidays.”

The Freddie Mac release also noted that this would include two-to-four unit properties as well.

Maybe the old saying “Hi, I am from the government and I am here to help” can still be good news after all. This is perhaps one of the more unusual turns of the housing crisis yet.

Ebenezer Scrooge would be exclaiming, “Bah!Humbug!” to this. Sometimes you just cannot make news up better than the real news.

JON C. OGG

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.