MIAMI—What concerns Fannie Mac and Fannie Mae the most? Daniel Cunningham, senior vice president of PNC Realty, moderated a discussion between John Kovacevich, director of Fannie and Richard Martinez, vice president of Production and Sales at Freddie, to get some answers during RealShare Apartments East in Miami last week.

One thing that concerns both men is the lack of affordable housing. Kovacevich said, “The industry tells us that we lose about 100,000 affordable units a year. We are being asked by the administration to augment that with increased production on the product class.”

Of course, augmenting production is one thing, controlling supply of capital is another. So how do Fannie and Freddie find the balance?

“Your competitors control your supply and you respond to them,” Martinez said. “The direction we're getting is its full speed ahead. Don't you start interfacing with the borrowers and start talking about caps on a deal by deal basis we want to do as much good business as we can.”

Cunningham asked a pointed question about average loan sizes. Although it varies, both Kovacevich and Martinez offered solid answers.

“Corporately, I think our average is $16 to 17 million,” Martinez said. “It varies by region. In the Southeast right now it's about 15,16, 17. To me it's a function of new development. We are all looking at new development deals.”

Kovacevich says he's seen average loan size creep up for the last five years. He said in 2010 the average sized loan was $5 million to $7 million.

“Now it's $12 million to $15 million,” he said. “I imagine in 2015 it's grown bigger than that because the opportunities we've seen lately have been very large sized loans.”

As Kovacevich sees it, the agencies must try to do the best business they can and “make sure you don't eat every thing on your plate too early in the year because you want to make sure you have enough.” It's a balancing act in which they hope to find success in 2015 even as they look to staff up to meet the demand.

“It's interesting. When you start making money, things change,” Martinez said. “Both agencies have been given back all the money they've borrowed from the federal government. We are making money. The intense focus and scrutiny has changed. So we 've been able to make more compensation changes. Retaining employees is the number one concern.”