A Ray of Sunshine for Freddie and Fannie

After much speculation about a government intervention to take over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, this week gave us a surprise.  After a very bad year of losses, and even worse media coverage, the two stocks actually had a gain this week.  Fannie Mae opened this week at $4.54 and closed at $5.19 after a $1.30 loss last week.  Freddie Mac followed suit by gaining $0.67 after a $1.58 last week.  What changed?  One factor that contributed to the increase was that Freddie sold $2 billion in debt to investors late last week.  This caused some investors to believe that perhaps Freddie did have the ability to start to bail itself out.  Additionally, Jim Cramer of NBC news shared an opinion last week that now that oil prices have dropped the housing market will “fall in line.”  If only I had a crystal ball to see into the future and know exactly what was going to happen I could offer some reassurances of my own.  On the bright side many signs are pointing to a positive shift in the near future.  Luckily,

San Antonio

has held strong when much of the nation has fallen hard as stricter lending regulations have pushed many buyers out of the buying pool.  We all just have to exercise a little more patience as we wait for some of the surplus inventory to sell off before we can enjoy a real estate market with a little more normalcy.