Washington, DC – Today, the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) announced that issuance for its Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) program increased to nearly $15 billion in March, the highest rate of issuance since November 2003. For the first quarter of calendar year 2008, issuance hit $39.1 billion, an increase from $18.3 billion during the same period last year.

"Ginnie Mae has seen a steady increase in our issuance since October of last year," said Theodore B. Foster, Senior Vice President for Mortgage-Backed Securities at Ginnie Mae. "As the mortgage credit market tightened, and the subprime mortgage market and the private label MBS market collapsed, investors began moving toward the safety and stability of Ginnie Mae MBS, just as borrowers began moving back to the security of government loans - particularly Federal Housing Administration loans."

In recent years, Ginnie Mae and FHA lost ground when a portion of the mortgage sector began targeting FHA's traditional core customers - first-time, low- and moderate-income borrowers. During this period, FHA-insured mortgages plunged from an 11 percent share of the American home market in 1995, to 3.3 percent in 2004. Ginnie Mae's share of the MBS market declined to a low of 4 percent in 2005.

Now, as a result of the current upheaval in the home finance industry, the private label MBS market - backed primarily by subprime loans - represents just 7 percent of the total MBS market, when two years ago, private label MBS represented 57 percent of total MBS dollar volume.

"Currently, agency and government MBS are the primary sources of mortgage credit available for home financing," said Foster. "There is strong evidence that this trend will continue. Our issuers have indicated that as much as 30 or 40 percent of their business may be securitized through Ginnie Mae this year. We expect Ginnie Mae to issue between $175 and $200 billion in MBS in calendar year 2008."

Ginnie Mae was created in 1968, to expand access to affordable housing opportunities by linking global capital markets to the nation's housing markets, guaranteeing more than $2.6 trillion in MBS, and helping millions of low- and moderate-income Americans achieve their dream of homeownership.

JPMorgan Chase, which at $3 billion was the largest issuer of Ginnie Mae MBS in March 2008, noted the important role that Ginnie Mae fills for the U.S. housing market.

"Ginnie Mae is providing much-needed liquidity to the housing financing market," said Garry Cipponeri, Director of Capital Markets at Chase. "Lenders originate FHA, VA, and rural housing loans because they know that they can pool them into a Ginnie Mae MBS."

Ginnie Mae is a wholly-owned government corporation within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ginnie Mae pioneered the mortgage-backed security (MBS), guaranteeing the very first security in 1970. An MBS enables a mortgage lender to aggregate and sell mortgage loans as a security to investors. Ginnie Mae securities carry the full faith and credit of the United States Government, which means that, even in difficult times, an investment in Ginnie Mae is one of the safest an investor can make.