A profit built on a reserve release
Freddie Mac reported net income of $3.8 billion for the second quarter of 2026, up 61 percent from a year earlier, and said the increase was primarily driven by a credit reserve release in the current period compared with a credit reserve build in the second quarter of 2025. Net revenues were $6.0 billion, up 1 percent year over year, as higher net interest income was partly offset by lower non-interest income. The company recorded a $0.9 billion benefit for credit losses in the quarter, mainly from a reserve release in its single-family business. Net worth stood at $78 billion as of June 30, and the total mortgage portfolio reached $3.7 trillion.
William J. Pulte, chair of Freddie Mac's board and director of U.S. Federal Housing, said the results reflected "the strength of the business, and disciplined execution against our priorities." The company said it made home possible for 439,000 households in the quarter, financing 306,000 mortgages — with 54 percent of eligible loans affordable to low- and moderate-income families — and 133,000 rental units, of which 91 percent were affordable to that income group. First-time homebuyers accounted for 52 percent of new single-family purchase loans.
The delinquency trend beneath the profit
Set against the earnings, Freddie Mac's own credit metrics show quality drifting in the wrong direction. The single-family serious delinquency rate was 0.60 percent as of June 30, up from 0.59 percent at December 31, 2025, and up from 0.55 percent a year earlier. Multifamily delinquency rose more sharply, to 0.51 percent from 0.44 percent at year-end 2025 and 0.47 percent a year earlier — an increase of roughly seven basis points year over year on a base that had itself already ticked up.
New business activity grew across both lines: single-family new business volume was $110 billion, up from $94 billion in the second quarter of 2025, which the company attributed mainly to higher refinance activity; multifamily new business was $18 billion, up from $12 billion. The single-family mortgage portfolio was $3.2 trillion, up 1 percent year over year, while the multifamily portfolio grew faster, up 8 percent to $505 billion.
Reading the two trends together
The reserve release that boosted second-quarter income is, definitionally, a bet that fewer of the loans on Freddie's books will default than the company previously assumed — a bet that sits somewhat uneasily next to serious delinquency rates that have risen, not fallen, on both the single-family and multifamily sides over the past year. Reserve releases reduce the loss allowance carried against a portfolio; a rising delinquency rate does not by itself invalidate that judgment, since delinquency and ultimate loss rates are different things, but the two data points moving in opposite directions is a signal to watch rather than a settled contradiction.
Multifamily delinquency's climb from 0.44 percent to 0.51 percent within six months is the larger percentage move of the two portfolios and comes as several apartment markets nationally have faced softer rent growth and, in some metros, elevated new supply — conditions that pressure debt-service coverage on multifamily loans without necessarily showing up yet in headline vacancy figures.
The company's own quarterly income series, disclosed in its financial supplement, shows net income of $2.4 billion in the second quarter of 2025, $2.8 billion in each of the third and fourth quarters, $3.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and $3.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026 — a steady climb of roughly 61 percent from the year-earlier quarter that has coincided with the credit reserve swinging from a $783 million build a year ago to a $880 million release most recently, according to the supplement's selected income-statement data.