After being taken over by the U.S. government in September, mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being retooled to get the troubled housing market back on track, instead of focusing on creating larger profits for the company shareholders and executives.

This means drastic cuts and changes in the personnel and policies, initiated at the direction of two new CEOs, hired seven weeks ago when the government took control of the failing mortgage lenders.

“Anything that is not necessary under the old traditions, we are going to discard,” said Fannie Mae Chief Executive Herb Allison Monday.

“Instead of focusing on maximizing returns, we (will) focus on what is the minimum return on capital that is necessary,” added Allison.

And Freddie Mac’s new CEO echoed the same sentiments.”Providing more liquidity to the market has been our primary focus,” said David Moffett, at a conference for the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Some of the changes that have already been made include a decision by both companies to halt future processing fee hikes that would bring in more profit, but make it more expensive and challenging for home buyers to get a mortgage loan.

Freddie Mac also announced last week that it will no longer accept no-doc loans, mortgages requiring no proof of income. These “liar loans” allowed many to jump into the housing market without truly having the ability to make the monthly payments. The result has been an intense rate of default, leading to a housing market overstocked with foreclosed homes.

Both Allison and Moffett have aimed much of their energy at helping borrowers refinance out of their costly adjustable rate mortgages into more affordable terms, hopefully saving them from foreclosure. And while Fannie Mae alone has saved 300,000 borrowers this year from losing their homes, according to Fannie’s Allison, “that is not good enough. We need to ramp up our activities.”