‘Huge disconnect between buyers and sellers’ says Fannie Mae CEO during stop in San Diego

The head of Fannie Mae said Friday at a conference in downtown San Diego that potential homeowners are lacking enthusiasm compared to sellers.

Priscilla Almodovar, CEO of Fannie Mae, spoke to roughly 500 people Friday morning in the Harbor Ballroom of the Manchester Grand Hyatt. She was there as part of the annual L’Attitude conference, a Latino-themed business event.

“Right now, there is a huge disconnect between buyers and sellers,” Almodovar said. “When we ask buyers how they feel about buying a home, it’s at all-time lows. Sellers, on the other hand, think it’s a great time to sell a home.”

Almodovar said even with mortgage rates lowering and more homes on the market, they are not seeing a significant rise in sales. She stopped short of actually suggesting sellers lower prices, or predicting home prices will drop. However, Almodovar did predict a sluggish sales market.

“Last year was an all-time low for sales, and we think this year we will see a similar trajectory,” she said.

In 2023, there were 26,910 home sales in San Diego County, the lowest in records dating to 1988. The only years that came close to that level were 31,268 home sales in 1995 and 34,294 in 2008.

Fannie Mae is a government-sponsored agency that is publicly traded. Formed by Congress in 1938, its purpose is to secure government-backed mortgages to moderate- to low-income home purchasers. It has $4.3 trillion in assets, making it the fifth-largest company in the world by assets, according to Fortune.

Almodovar was on stage with Gary Acosta, CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Both speakers said prices and other ways Fannie Mae was working to establish credit history for low-income buyers might not be as impactful because of a nationwide for-sale housing shortage.

“Ultimately, building is a local issue. Zoning, building codes, land, all of that has to be aligned,” she said. “It’s all levels of government working together, it’s finance working together, and builders, who have to be part of the conversation. The numbers have to make sense for them.”

Almodovar said it probably wouldn’t be until the latter part of 2025 until mortgage rates fall below 6 percent. As of Friday morning, the average interest rate was 6.14 percent for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, said Mortgage News Daily.

L’Attitude started in 2018 and is typically held in San Diego. The mission of the four-day conference, say organizers, is to showcase contributions of Latinos in business, media, politics, science and technology. It has attracted big names over the years, including then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020.

While much of the conference leaned heavily toward real estate, there were plenty of speakers Friday on different topics.

Jaime Nacach, founder of Virtual Latinos, talked about value in outsourcing work to his talent agency, which has a roster of job candidates across Latin America. He argued companies could save up to 70 percent of operating costs by outsourcing.

The day’s motivational speaker was Fernando “Nando” Seler Parrado Dolgay, a survivor of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes in 1972. The survivors’ story was the subject of the 1993 film “Alive.” He talked about having courage in the face of adversity and how the power of love lifted him up throughout his life.

Friday also served as a launch day for a new real estate brokerage called Realty of America. The founders came on stage to a video of them flying in airplanes all over the country in expensive suits and riding in Rolls-Royces. Eddie Garcia, former CEO of Realty of Chicago, said it was his dream to eventually take the company public.

“This is about breaking the cycle of poverty,” Garcia said of his work.