Plans to take mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public have reportedly kicked into a higher gear, with unspecified Trump administration officials telling The Wall Street Journal that an initial public offering may occur this year.

According to the Journal’s reporting, between 5% and 15% of the companies’ stock would likely be offered to the public in a process that could raise around $30 billion. The combined companies could fetch a valuation exceeding $500 billion, though it is still up for debate whether it would be a single IPO or involve two separate stock listings.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that President Donald Trump met with the CEOs of several major U.S. banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America — to discuss monetization plans for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser reportedly followed suit on Wednesday.

Despite the reported presence of Wall Street luminaries in the IPO talks, it is unclear whether Fannie and Freddie would remain under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), an arrangement that has been in place since the companies encountered fiscal distress during the 2008 financial crisis and were bailed out by the Treasury Department. In 2010, the GSEs were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and currently trade over the counter on what’s known as the Pink Sheets.

Fannie and Freddie do not directly originate mortgages. Instead, they purchase loans and package them as mortgage-backed securities that are sold to investors, providing liquidity to lenders. Combined, the two GSEs support around 70% of the U.S. mortgage market, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Trump first hinted he was considering taking Fannie and Freddie public in a May social media post. In an interview with Scotsman Guide last week, FHFA Director Bill Pulte said taking the companies public while keeping them under federal control remains a possibility, though he declined to provide specifics of the behind-the-scenes deliberations.

‘Not an ordinary IPO’

If the Fannie and Freddie public float were to raise $30 billion, it would eclipse Saudi Aramco’s $25.6 billion IPO from 2019 as the largest initial public offering ever. Could an IPO of that magnitude be accomplished by the end of 2025?

Marty Green, a principal with Polunsky Beitel Green LLP, a Texas-based law firm that provides legal support to residential mortgage lenders, thinks that timeline is “extraordinarily aggressive” and is more of an “aspirational” goal by the administration.

“Any ordinary IPO would take longer than that, and this is not an ordinary IPO,” Green said in an interview with Scotsman Guide. “I think they could make some significant strides toward having that IPO at least sort of out there but not yet concluded, but I think the thought that it could be concluded between now and year-end is hard to imagine given where we are in the calendar.”

Green thinks the aggressiveness of the reported timeline makes it far more likely that an IPO would precede a conservatorship exit if the administration chooses to pursue the latter path.

“I think it’s more likely that you get an IPO done by year-end than you have an exit from conservatorship by year-end,” he said, though he cautioned that moving too quickly with the IPO process could be disruptive to the mortgage market and cause interest rates to spike — an outcome the Trump administration would like to avoid.

Trump attempted to take Fannie and Freddie public during his first term in the White House, though the plan failed to gain sufficient traction and ultimately sputtered when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. The difference this time, Green told Scotsman Guide, is that the GSEs have been retaining earnings and are in a better capital position compared to 2019.

He added that the next month will be crucial in determining whether we see Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back on the NYSE ticker tape in 2025.

“I think the next 30 days are going to tell you whether or not they’re serious about the timeline, because in order to meet that timeline, they’ve got to aggressively get things going,” Green said.