Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac IPO Stalls as Treasury's $234 Billion Claim Grows and Shares Fall More Than Half

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two companies that guarantee about half of US mortgages, remain in government conservatorship 18 years after the 2008 crisis. A public offering the administration floated in 2025, at a combined valuation of $500 billion or more, hasn’t happened. No banks have been mandated and no timetable announced.

The shares, which trade over the counter, fell more than 23% and 25% in September. They’re down more than half this year.

How it got here

In March 2025 Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the two companies, replaced most of both boards and made himself chairman of each. In May the President said he was considering taking them public and that the government would keep its “implicit guarantees.” Over the summer officials discussed selling 5% to 15% of the shares and raising up to $30 billion. In October 2025 Pulte said an offering could come as early as late 2025 or in early 2026, but that “it is up to the President what to do, if ANYTHING!”

In January 2026 the President ordered Fannie and Freddie to buy $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities, to push mortgage rates down. That made the companies a tool of housing policy again, which sits awkwardly with selling them to private investors. Analysts at KBW said in April that the window before the midterms was narrowing. In June the President said: “It’s not a rush.”

The money

Taxpayers put $191 billion into the two companies in 2008 and after. In return Treasury holds senior preferred stock and warrants to buy 79.9% of the common shares for almost nothing.

The senior preferred stock’s claim has kept growing, because the companies keep their earnings to rebuild capital and that adds to Treasury’s liquidation preference. At Fannie Mae alone it was $234.2 billion at the end of June 2026. Fannie’s net worth was $116.5 billion. Freddie Mac earned $10.7 billion in 2025 and had $70.4 billion in equity.

How Treasury’s claim is handled decides who gets the value. If it’s converted to common stock, existing shareholders are diluted heavily. If it’s written down, taxpayers give up value they’ve been promised. KBW cut its price targets in September, citing dilution risk.

The guarantee

The deeper question is the guarantee. Investors buy Fannie and Freddie mortgage bonds because they assume the government stands behind them. If the companies go private with an implicit guarantee, the government takes the risk while shareholders take the profit, the arrangement that failed in 2008. An explicit, priced guarantee would need Congress.

CBO has explained that how a release is structured changes how it’s counted in the budget, and that a sale could look like a gain in the year of sale while leaving the government exposed to future losses. Representative Scott Fitzgerald introduced a bill in June to set rules for any release.

What’s next

Pulte also served as acting director of national intelligence from June to August, which analysts said slowed the work. With the midterms close and the shares falling, the offering looks like a 2027 question at the earliest. Meanwhile the two companies, with about $7 trillion in combined assets and guarantees, keep running under government control.