Freddie Mac puts multi-family guide on CD-ROM

Real Estate Weekly, March 17, 1999

Freddie Mac has announced that its Multifamily Seller/Servicer Guide is now available on CD-ROM, giving its customers fast, easy and searchable access to Freddie Mac's multifamily lending guidelines and forms.

Licensed by the site, Freddie Mac's Multifamily E-Guide can be installed onto a Local Area Network, Wide Area Network or onto a stand-alone desktop or laptop PC, increasing company-wide access to the Guide. The E-Guide is being produced in conjunction with Mortgage Resource Center Inc., the developers of AllRegs, the computerized lending regulations used in nearly 7,000 locations by over 90 percent of the top 100 lenders.

"Our customers asked for an electronic Guide that automatically incorporates changes into the text and enables them to view and print-out current copies of our forms," said Thomas J. Watt, senior vice president of Freddie Mac's Multifamily Division. "Portability of the E-Guide is another important feature for customers who are frequently on the road and need to know right away how Freddie Mac's underwriting principles apply to properties under consideration."

Updating the Guide is as easy as opening the mail and inserting a new CD each month. Around the fifth of every month, AllRegs will send multifamily seller/servicers a new CD. Highlighted text visible on the computer screen will show customers where the E-Guide contains changes. And each new CD that contains Guide changes will include a bulletin cover letter that explains those changes. In addition, the E-Guide lets users personalize their "copies" of the Guide with bookmarks and personal notes on-line, and for an additional fee, lenders can insert their own internal manuals and link them to the content of AllRegs.

Since the introduction of the Freddie Mac Program Plus network of multifamily loan originators and servicers in 1993, Freddie Mac has provided financing for over 4,200 multifamily properties totaling more than $13 billion. That volume represents over 520,000 rental units across the country, 95 percent of which are affordable to whose income levels are at or below area median income, including newly established households, single-parent households, large family households at lower salaries and older Americans.

Freddie Mac is a stockholder-owned corporation established by Congress in 1970 to create a continuous flow of funds to mortgage lenders in support of home-ownership and rental housing, Freddie Mac purchases mortgages from lenders and packages them into securities that are sold to investors. Over the years, Freddie Mac has opened doors for one in six home-buyers and two million renters across America.

More information about Freddie Mac can be found on the company's Web site, located at http://www.freddiemac.com