Fannie Mae Enhances True Cost Calculator; Version 2.0 Offers New Features to Help Lenders and Borrowers Consider Cost of Mortgage Products Faster

Business Wire, Feb 7, 2001

Business Editors

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 7, 2001

As consumers decide whether to buy or refinance their mortgages to benefit from the recent drop in interest rates, Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM), the nation's largest source of financing for home mortgages, today introduced its newest version of the True Cost Calculator(SM), an online tool that provides a simple way for consumers to consider various mortgage options as they work with their mortgage lender.

The newest release of True Cost Calculator 2.0 allows consumers to benefit from a more intuitive design and new features such as the ability to create a file and save multiple loan scenarios for comparison purposes without having to re-enter their data.

"We are pleased to offer these enhancements to the True Cost Calculator," said David Voth, chief product development officer, Fannie Mae/eBusiness.

"With our new web infrastructure, we are able to provide our lender partners with a version of True Cost Calculator that is more powerful, faster, and more reliable. This enables us to offer the new online capabilities, and time-saving efficiencies to the growing number of partners who are linking to the True Cost Calculator."

Launched in April 2000 as part of Fannie Mae's Mortgage Consumer Bill of Rights, the True Cost Calculator helps consumers calculate all the costs of getting a mortgage including interest rate and points, mortgage insurance costs, appraisal fees, title insurance fees, and miscellaneous settlement charges.

The True Cost Calculator also allows borrowers to calculate those fees over the full term of the loan or the time they actually plan to hold the loan. By calculating the costs over the period of time the borrower actually plans to hold the loan, the True Cost Calculator can provide a more useful and realistic cost assessment.

Through their web browsers, consumers can calculate and compare the true cost of the various mortgage options on the market, and then choose the best, lowest-cost option to meet their needs. For each loan a consumer is considering, the True Cost Calculator provides an analysis that includes four key measures:

-- the True Cost Rate, which is the true cost of the mortgage, including all
costs, expressed as an annual percentage rate based on the time the borrower
actually plans to hold the loan;

-- the True Cost Rate after taking into account the borrower's potential tax
savings;

-- the monthly mortgage payment; and,

-- the estimated equity that the borrower can expect to accumulate during the
time he or she actually plans to hold the loan.

When Fannie Mae first launched the True Cost Calculator last April, the company pledged to make it available to industry participants to link to their Web sites to help prospective home buyers make an 'apples to apples' comparison between different loan products.

Cendant Mortgage, www.cendantmortgage.com is the first Web site to link to the True Cost Calculator 2.0.

Since April many lenders and industry portals have linked to the calculator including: Allfirst Bank, www.Allfirst.com; BET.com, www.bet.com/homecenter; Century21, www.century21.com; Clarity Bank, www.mortgagesvcs.com; Coldwell Banker, www.coldwellbanker.com; ERA, www.era.com; Financial Partners, www.financialpartners.org; Hibernia Mortgage, www.hibernia.com; HOMEstore, www.homestore.com; Hudson United Bank, www.HudsonUnitedBank.com; InstaMortgage.com, www.instamortgage.com; MilitaryHomeLoans.com, www.militaryhomeloans.com; Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union, www.suncoastfcu.org; Univision.com, www.univision.com; and US Bank, www.usbank.com.

All of these sites have the latest version of the True Cost Calculator available on their Web sites. In addition to these sites, the True Cost Calculator 2.0 will be available on Fannie Mae's consumer Web site, HomePath.com, www.homepath.com in the coming weeks. Fannie Mae will continue to make this valuable tool available to others in the industry.

Consumers can log onto anyone of these Web sites to calculate and compare the true cost of the various mortgage options, then choose the best, lowest-cost option to meet their needs.

"We are very pleased with the new enhancements and look forward to using it with our customers," said Terry Edwards, president and CEO of Cendant Mortgage. "The True Cost Calculator 2.0 continues to be an effective tool to help our customers better understand the mortgage decision."

The new version of True Cost Calculator is powered by Loudcloud, Inc.'s infrastructure operations management services, enabling users to benefit from faster processing speed and a 100 percent guaranteed scheduled uptime.

Also, as more industry participants make the True Cost Calculator available on their Web sites, Loudcloud's infrastructure services can provide dramatic capabilities to support an expanded user base and control potential traffic spikes virtually on demand.

"Loudcloud's advanced and secure solution delivers unprecedented reliability, efficiency and performance quality ideal for Fortune 100 customers like Fannie Mae," said Ben Horowitz, CEO and co-founder of Loudcloud, Inc.