We have found no evidence that fixed-rate mortgages, for example, were difficult to obtain during the early 1990s when GSE portfolios were small.
Indeed, the share of adjustable-rate mortgage originations averaged slightly more than 20 percent in 1992, when GSE portfolios were small, and averaged 34 percent in 2004, when GSE portfolios were large; these data suggest that the size of the GSEs' portfolios is unrelated to the availability or popularity of fixed-rate mortgages.