After a quarter of growth, ""Fannie Mae's"":http://www.fanniemae.com/portal/index.html total Book of Business remained essentially flat in October, the GSE revealed in its ""monthly volume summary"":http://www.fanniemae.com/resources/file/ir/pdf/monthly-summary/103112.pdf.
[IMAGE]Declines in both Fannie Mae's gross mortgage portfolio and in new business acquisitions brought the book's growth to a negative annualized rate of 0.03 percent, down from a positive rate of 0.4 percent in September.
[COLUMN_BREAK]Year-to-date, the book's average compounded growth rate is 0.3 percent.
In total, Fannie Mae's Book of Business was worth about $3.19 trillion at the end of the month, down about $90 million from September.
A relatively small increase in mortgage purchases was offset by a more significant loss in sales, bringing the total mortgage portfolio to a negative annualized growth rate of 19.3 percent in October, the highest rate of contraction all year. Throughout 2012, the average growth rate of the portfolio reached negative 11 percent by the end of the month. The portfolio's end balance was approximately $642.7 billion.
The GSE also reported a decline in seriously delinquent single-family loans. The single-family serious delinquency rate fell from 3.41 percent in September to end October at 3.35 percent. The multifamily serious delinquency rate stayed flat at 0.28 percent.
Fannie Mae completed 14,511 loan modifications in October, coming in above the 2012 average. The October figure brings the year-to-date total to 138,211.