Richard Martinez
Senior Vice President of Multifamily Production and Sales at Freddie Mac
Last year's rank: 1
Freddie Mac’s mission shifted in the past year from providing stability to the multifamily market during the height of COVID-19 to focusing on tackling the nation’s affordable housing crisis.
“What existed before the pandemic has become more exacerbated post-pandemic, and that is affordability,” Richard Martinez said. “Freddie Mac is now pivoting back to a greater focus on affordability and what Freddie Mac can do to help address affordability.”
The renewed focus came amid a leadership change, too. Debby Jenkins, who had headed Freddie Mac’s multifamily business since 2018, departed the housing finance agency in late 2021 to join Kayne Anderson Real Estate as head of housing.
“[Jenkins’] position is a critical position to fill,” Martinez said. “Our president and CEO want to make sure that we have the right individual in that spot to lead us forward in the challenging times we’re facing with respect to affordability.”
The government-sponsored enterprise once again maximized its lending cap, purchasing $70 billion in loans for 2021 while also making $674 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) equity investments. The company financed roughly 650,000 rental units last year, 95 percent of which are affordable.
The McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac securitized a record $80.6 billion through multiple offerings and, in the process, transferred a large majority of expected and stress credit risk to third-party investors. Around 57 percent of Freddie Mac’s volume qualified as mission-driven, which went above and beyond its 50 percent target for the year.
In November 2021, the organization launched a new initiative to help renters build credit by encouraging operators of multifamily properties to report on-time rental payments to the three major credit-reporting bureaus. The program, which incentivizes rent reporting via technology created by Esusu Financial, helped establish credit scores for more than 6,000 individuals by the end of 2021. —A.C.
