Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have scaled back the information that their economists are allowed to provide to the public this year, paring down or eliminating reports that sometimes paint a picture of the economy and the housing market that’s not entirely rosy.
Last month, for the first time in more than 15 years, Fannie Mae didn’t publish the results of its National Housing Survey, a monthly poll of consumer sentiment that’s uniquely focused on housing issues like home prices and mortgage rates. The fact that the survey results weren’t published last month has flown under the radar and is being reported for the first time here.
When the National Housing Survey was last published in October, it showed that only 27 percent of Americans thought September was a good time to buy a home, and 67 percent said the economy was on the wrong track.
The survey powers Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI), which has proven to be a useful tool for predicting future home sales and housing starts.
In addition to those changes at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in February discontinued publication of its economic, housing and mortgage market outlook.
Freddie Mac’s last forecast — published on Jan. 24, four days after President Trump’s second inauguration — noted that mortgage rates “remained higher than expected in 2024” and that “in early 2025 the prevailing sentiment is that rates will stay higher for longer. This may impact prospective buyers and sellers as we get into spring.”
Fannie Mae continues to publish monthly economic and housing forecasts but, as of April, economists with the company’s highly regarded Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group no longer provide commentary on economic developments.
In March — the last time Fannie Mae economists provided such commentary — forecasters at the mortgage giant downgraded their expectations for economic growth, based on tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and weaker consumer spending.
“We now expect core inflation to end 2025 and 2026 at 3.3 percent year over year and 2.2 percent year over year, respectively,” Fannie Mae economists said. “This result includes the already-enacted tariffs as well as our lowered oil price forecast, which counteracts some of the expected price increases in the near term.”
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment on the scaling back of economic and survey data the mortgage giants provide to the public.
It’s unclear whether Freddie Mac’s forecasts and Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey are still being conducted for internal use by company executives or if that work has been discontinued.
Survey powers housing sentiment index
Launched in June 2010, Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey poses more than 100 questions to household financial decision-makers, six of which are distilled into a Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI).
The housing-specific information that’s distilled into the HPSI can be valuable when changes in lending practices and home prices cause housing to diverge more than usual from the overall economy, according to one of its architects, James Wilcox, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Despite atypical housing markets and the index’s short history, indications so far are encouraging that the HPSI helps” forecasters, Wilcox wrote in a 2017 analysis for the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco. “Since it started in 2011, increases in the HPSI have quite reliably predicted stronger housing markets. And, when evaluated in conjunction with indexes of overall consumer sentiment, the HPSI proved to be a valuable contributor to housing forecasts.”
In a 2019 analysis, Fannie Mae researchers concluded that the HPSI outperformed the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Conference Board Survey of Consumer Sentiment to predict future home sales and housing starts.
Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index
Benchmarked at 60 on launching in March 2011, the HPSI climbed above 90 in 2019 on the eve of the pandemic, an all-time high. The HPSI then plunged below 60 in 2022 when mortgage rates rebounded from historic lows.
The last published reading of the HPSI — 71.4 in September — was unchanged from August but down from 73.9 in September 2024.
Fannie Mae began collecting self-reported sexual orientation data from National Housing Survey participants in the third quarter of 2022, allowing them to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).
As a result, Fannie Mae researchers discovered that LGBT consumers reported a higher incidence of obstacles to owning a home, with a 46 percent homeownership rate, “which is much lower than the overall U.S. homeownership rate of 65 percent.”
Since 2023, the National Housing Survey has been fielded online through the AmeriSpeak panel from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, in coordination with Fannie Mae and PSB Insights.
The National Opinion Research Center and PSB Insights did not respond to requests for comment on whether they still conduct the National Housing Survey for Fannie Mae.
FHFA’s tight control of Fannie and Freddie
After being confirmed by the Senate in March, FHFA Director Bill Pulte declared that “DEI is dead” at the mortgage giants and appointed himself the chair of both companies after purging their boards.
Since then, Pulte has issued dozens of orders out of the public eye and gutted Fannie Mae’s ethics and internal investigations unit — allegedly because investigators were concerned that Pulte improperly accessed confidential mortgage records to dig up evidence of fraud against opponents of the Trump administration.
As head of the FHFA and chair of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Pulte “effectively exercises unchecked control” over the mortgage giants, and has “used that control to insulate himself from accountability within the companies,” a Nov. 25 lawsuit by Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of four Democrats targeted by Pulte, alleged.
Pulte, who denies weaponizing Fannie and Freddie against Democrats, has also been a lead player in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
Fed rate cuts don’t always result in lower mortgage rates, which are determined by investor demand for mortgage-backed securities (MBS). After the Fed approved three rate cuts totaling a full percentage point at the end of 2024, mortgage rates went up by an equal amount when inflation surged.
Mortgage rate forecasts diverge
Source: Fannie Mae and Mortgage Bankers Association, November 2025 forecasts.
In a Nov. 13 forecast, Fannie Mae economists predicted rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages will fall below 6 percent by the end of next year. Forecasters at the Mortgage Bankers Association expect rates will average 6.4 percent in 2026.
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