Fannie Mae Lays Off Hundreds In D.C.

"Fannie Mae":http://www.fanniemae.com has begun laying off hundreds of employees at its Washington, D.C. office to make room for more employees at its Dallas, Texas anti-foreclosure office, according to multiple media reports.
Affected employees include those that worked in technology, administration, communications, and the company's single-family unit, which buys and bundles mortgages for securities.
The layoffs come as Fannie Mae continues to shifts its focus from being a publicly-traded financing firm to a foreclosure prevention organization under the conservatorship of the U.S. government.
Brian Faith, a company spokesman, said in a statement to "_The Washington Post_":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012301741.htmlxhpid=moreheadlines, "Fannie Mae is taking steps to realign the company's organization, personnel and resources to focus on our most critical priorities, which include preventing foreclosures to help keep people in their homes and aiding in the recovery."
Fannie Mae will have the same number of employees in 2009 as it did in 2008, more than 5,500, but more of those employees will now be based in Dallas.
While it continues to securitize mortgages, the volume is down, and other government agencies have become the funding mechanism for mortgages. At the same time, Fannie Mae has issued a months-long moratorium on evictions and foreclosures that ends this month, and created new programs to promote mortgage modifications and allow renters to stay in their homes after they've been foreclosed.
Faith added, "As part of this effort, the company is planning to increase staffing levels in some areas, such as in our Dallas operations where our foreclosure prevention and loss mitigation efforts are centralized, and reduce staffing levels in others to fully meet the company's primary objectives."