Adds comments from Trump, background, from paragraph 3 onwards

By Jasper Ward

WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will make a decision in the near future about taking mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, saying that he is giving "very serious consideration" to doing so.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he will speak with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Federal Housing Finance Director William Pulte.

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right," Trump said, without providing further details.

Fannie and Freddie, which operate as for-profit corporations with private shareholders, were created by the U.S. Congress to expand the national home lending market by buying home loans from private lenders and repackaging them as mortgage-backed securities.

When the housing market collapsed in 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered overwhelming losses. To avoid catastrophic effects for the U.S. economy, they were placed in conservatorship under the newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Previous attempts to rid government control of the organizations, including under Trump's first term in office, have been unsuccessful.

In February, Bessent said the release of Fannie and Freddie from their conservatorship would depend on mortgage rate implications.

"The priority for a Fannie and Freddie release, the most important metric that I'm looking at, is any study or hint that mortgage rates would go up," Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Donna Bryson and Leslie Adler)

((Jasper.Ward@thomsonreuters.com;))