As the mortgage industry prepares for the Trump Administration’s plans for an initial public offering (IPO) of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on CNBC to offer his comments on the subject.
During the interview aired Thursday, Lutnick disclosed that the IPO “could well be this year … sooner than people think.
“Now, do we want to sell a lot? No. What we want to do is show a mark-to-market right, [where] the president shows these are assets that we — the American taxpayers — own and look at how much they’re worth and how well they perform. And what we want to do is keep the price of a home mortgage as low as mathematically possible.”
Lutnick said that only a small portion of the mortgage giants, which have been under federal conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis, would be sold to the public.
“I think a deal is going to be struck. I think we’re going to take the company public. I think we’re going to sell it. … Could potentially be the largest IPO in history, right? But only a small percentage of these companies. And we’ll show the American taxpayers these are assets that they didn’t think they owned, but we own them. The taxpayers own them.”
The rumored IPO was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 8. Just a day later, Trump seemed to confirm the report and posted an AI image on Truth Social of him at the New York Stock Exchange with the words: “MAGA LISTED NYSE” and “The Great American Mortgage Corporation,” along with a date of November 2025.
The idea of a merger has garnered mixed industry feedback. In a blog post Thursday, Mortgage Bankers Association president and CEO Bob Broeksmit highlighted the benefits of having Fannie and Freddie stay separate and competitive.
“Competition between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been central to their success in providing liquidity and stability to the mortgage market,” Broeksmit wrote. “Creating a government-conferred monopoly would diminish innovation, degrade service to market participants, and heighten systemic risk by concentrating housing finance operations within a single entity.”
Others, like Clifford Rossi — a former senior financial economist at Fannie Mae and a senior director of single-family risk management at Freddie Mac — are championing the merger. Rossi told HousingWire in August that it does not make sense to have entities that are “nothing more than a large financial market utility” competing on price.
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