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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac support the mortgage industry by buying mortgages from lenders and selling mortgage-backed securities to investors. They were placed into conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in September 2008 after suffering massive losses during the housing crash, threatening the stability of the U.S. financial system. The U.S. Treasury provided a bailout to keep them afloat, and they have remained under government control ever sincedespite returning to profitability. While the U.S. Treasury owns the majority of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits through senior preferred stock agreements, the common and preferred shares that existed before conservatorship were never fully wiped out. Once Wall Street realized Donald Trump had won the 2024 election, the stocks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spiked as the market priced in higher odds that the second Trump administration would attempt to end that conservatorship. After all, one of Trumps biggest backers this cycle was Bill Ackman, a leading proponent of releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from conservatorship. The odds of conservatorship endingor at the very least, an attempt to unwind itincreased this week after Trump posted on social media: Im giving very serious consideration to bringing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public. Then, on Thursday evening, Bill Pulte, the director of FHFA, tweeted out a podcast he did with Donald Trump Jr. centered on the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those arent the kind of public moves the administration would make unless it is seriously considering a push to end conservatorship or wants to further test financial market reaction to the idea. What would this do to mortgage rates? The reason housing stakeholders should pay attention is the long standing concern that ending conservatorship could put upward pressure on mortgage rates and more strain on housing affordability. Once released, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could need to hold more capital to absorb losses. To build and maintain that capital, they may need to increase guarantee fees charged to lenders. In addition, upon release, unless there’s an explicit guarantee or backstop from Congress, investors may demand higher returns to account for increased risk. Those concerns are real enough that back in February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae wouldnt get released from conservatorship if doing so put upward pressure on mortgage rates/mortgage spreads. The priority for a Fannie and Freddie release, the most important metric that Im looking at is any study or hint that mortgage rates would go up. Anything that is done around a safe and sound release [of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] is going to hinge on the effect of long-term mortgage rates, Bessent said in February. On Friday, Bessent reaffirmed in an interview with Bloomberg that the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hinges on mortgage rates, saying: It [privatization of Fannie and Freddie] is a goal for this administration. Again, we’re doing peace deals, tax deals, and trade deals. As we land some of those deals then we will focus on that [privatization of Fannie and Freddie]. But what I can tell you is that we are doing a great deal of studying at Treasury because the one requirement for this privatization is that they are privatized in such a way that mortgage spreads do not widen. To understand how mortgage rates could respond in different Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae release scenarios, read this housing research we published earlier this year.
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E-Commerce
One of the most popular smartphone apps in the world has finally come to the iPad. Today, Meta has officially released WhatsApp for iPad. The release comes nearly sixteen years after WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone, and went on to become the de facto messaging app for most of the world. WhatsApp comes to the iPad WhatsApp debuted on the iPhone in 2009, and within just five years, that messaging app had become so popular that Facebook (now Meta) announced in 2014 that it was acquiring it for a staggering $19 billion. But the extraordinary sum Meta paid for WhatsApp seems to have been worth it. On Metas financial conference call on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp now has 3 billion monthly active users worldwide. Thats a billion more than the app had just five years earlier in 2020, notes TechCrunch. Outside of the United States and China, where Apples iMessage and Tencents WeChat respectively dominate the messaging app market, WhatsApp is the preferred communication app for the rest of the world. Its no wonder, then, that fans of the app have hoped it would come to Apples iPad since the tablet was introduced in 2010. Today, those hopes have finally been realized. Meta has now released an updated WhatsApp app on Apples App Store that runs natively on both the iPhone and iPad. Based on the App Store listing images, WhatsApp for iPad supports many of the features of WhatsApp for iPhone, including messaging, calls, and app lock. How to get WhatsApp for iPad To get WhatsApp for iPad, go to the App Store on your iPad and search for WhatsApp. Youll now see the app show up in your search results. Simply click on the Get button to download the app (or the cloud download button if you previously downloaded the app to your iPhone). WhatsApp will then install on your iPad, and youll be ready to chat on Apples tablet. You can check out the App Store listing for WhatsApp for iPad here. What has Meta said about WhatsApp for iPad? Surprisingly, Meta has launched WhatsApp for iPad with little fanfare. As of the time of this writing, Meta has not published any announcement that WhatsApp is now available on the iPad. Even the release notes for the latest build of WhatsApp for iPhone dont mention that the app now natively supports the iPad (Meta uses a single binary for the iPhone and iPad versions of the app). The only public comment Meta has given about WhatsApp for iPad was in a post on X yesterday. The official WhatsApp account on X replied with an eye emoji to a comment suggesting that the app should be released on the iPad. https://t.co/RWs0L40cBm— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 26, 2025 Regardless of the lack of fanfare from Meta, WhatsApp and iPad fans will be happy that 15 years after Apples tablet debuted, and 16 years after the app debuted, its now usable on the iPad.
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E-Commerce
After six years in the game, Nuuly, the clothing rental service from Urban Outfitters, has done what few thought possible: turned a profit. In an industry full of flashy failures and billion-dollar burns, Nuuly is quietly winning with a strategy that’s shaking up fashion and business.
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E-Commerce
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