The mortgage market is comprised of a primary and secondary market. These two markets work together to give money to a borrower and offer returns on investments to investors.

The primary market occurs on the retail end, meaning a mortgage lender sells directly to the consumer. You may use the services of a broker or loan officer in order to have this transaction run smoothly. This is the place where mortgages are originated and the money is given directly to the borrower. In the primary market, mortgage lenders make there money on processing fees. There are often many fees associated with getting a mortgage that the buyer is responsible for.

Because there can be many fees as charged by the mortgage lender, it is important to know exactly where your money is being spent. You should ask for an itemized report for every fee. Unfortunately there dishonest mortgage lenders and they will make up charges and fees that really don’t have any effort or actual action behind them. This is how some borrowers can get scammed, and often they may not even know it!

The secondary market manages mortgages that have already been originated in the primary market. What occurs here is the mortgage lenders package many mortgages together and sell the notes to investors. Mortgage lenders replenish their cash reserves that can be used towards the origination of more mortgages. The investors make money off of the interest that is charged on the mortgages.

There are both private and public investors that buy these notes. Public investors include Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mac that are all government supported. Private investors may include banks, thrift institutions and other individual private investors.

The mortgage lender really has a circular pattern, originating loans, selling them to investors and then using that money from the sales to issue more loans.

Many times, you do not even know that your mortgage is going to be sold into the secondary market. However, the mortgage lender should always notify you of this transaction if the mortgage is sold to someone else. If you have questions about this process, you can ask your mortgage lender as to what his or her process is.

So when you purchase a mortgage, then you are working in the primary market. The secondary market is for mortgages that have already been originated by the mortgage lender and they are being bought and sold as investments for either private or public investors. This mortgage process keeps money flowing through the industry and makes more money available to the public to continue property.

The U.S. secondary mortgage market was established in 1938 by a single agency called the Federal National Mortgage Association. Fannie Mae, as the agency is commonly known, held a monopoly on the secondary mortgage market until 1968, when it was changed from a government controlled entity to a privately owned corporation, and some of its responsibilities were passed on to other organizations. Despite the re-organization, Fannie Mae essentially works the same as always – by purchasing mortgages from banks and other lenders and enabling investors to buy them as securities. Fannie Mae’s purchases of mortgage loans total more than $6.5 billion annually, and investors typically capitalize interest of more than 10 per cent on these loans. Fannie Mae’s 1968 re-organization produced several new agencies, examined below, and ended Fannie Mae’s function as the guarantor of government issued mortgages.

Fannie Mae’s responsibility for government issued mortgages was passed on to a new government owned corporation within the Department of Housing and Urban Development called the Government National Mortgage Association. Ginnie Mae, as it is commonly known, also pools mortgages into bonds from pre-approved lenders. In this process, Ginnie Mae allows lenders to issue bonds for its mortgages with a guarantee on repayment. In exchange, Ginnie Mae receives a guarantee fee, typically for less than one per cent of the loan. As of 2003, Ginnie Mae claimed to have guaranteed securities on homes for a total of more than $2 trillion.

The largest organizations in the secondary mortgage market also include the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (commonly known as Freddy Mac) and the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (known as Farmer Mac. These organizations both work in a manner similar to Fannie Mae’s, by buying mortgages from banks and other primary lenders, and providing liquidity and investment opportunity to the mortgage market.

The impact of groups like Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae, Freddy Mac, and Farmer Mac could increase significantly if government lowered its regulations on this market. For example, a stimulus package being considered by government could allow Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae to buy many more mortgages by raising the value limit for Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae mortgages by more than 80 per cent.