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Publications – Dreihaus College of Business
Title
FNMA Mortgage Commitments as Put Options: An Empirical Examination
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
March 1985
Abstract
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) auctions commitments to purchase mortgages. An examination of the terms of the commitment contract shows that these commitments are actually put options on mortgages. The contract is unusual, however, in that the price of the commitment is a fixed percentage of the value of the mortgages. In the auction, the dealers effectively bid the exercise price at which they would be willing to pay the fixed commitment price. In this paper, we study the economics of the FNMA auction. We use a two-state approximation to the American put pricing model for interest-dependent securities to examine the behavior of the auction results. We find that the model performs reasonably well for several years — giving results which are, on the average, correct — and then, quite abruptly, the performance of the model deteriorates. Some possible reasons for this result are then examined.
Source Publication
Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Ecomonics Association
Recommended Citation
Berry, Thomas and Gehr, Adam. (1985) FNMA Mortgage Commitments as Put Options: An Empirical Examination. Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Ecomonics Association.
https://via.library.depaul.edu/buspubs/42