Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed single-family property disposition activities of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), and the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), focusing on: (1) the number of single-family properties acquired and sold, the losses associated with those sales, and current inventories and their geographical distribution; and (2) each agency's procedures for managing and selling single-family properties.

GAO found that: (1) FHA, VA, and FmHA actively pursued their property disposition functions; (2) from fiscal year (FY) 1989 through FY 1990, those agencies acquired about 606,000 single-family homes and sold nearly 595,000, with losses totalling more than $11.4 billion; (3) although overall sales lagged behind acquisitions from 1986 through 1988, sales exceeded acquisitions in 1989; (4) in FY 1990, sales outpaced acquisitions by more than 10,000 properties, resulting in an ending inventory of 62,000 properties, the lowest since 1986; (5) RTC managed and sold assets of failed federally insured savings and institutions, adding nearly 27,000 single-family properties to the federal total; (6) from January to September 1990, RTC sold nearly 11,200 single-family properties; (7) inventory levels of single-family properties at the end of FY 1990 were higher in states where there had been an economic turndown; (8) the four agencies similarly disposed of single-family properties, although some procedural variations existed; and (9) private-sector brokers performed most management and sales activities under the oversight of agencies' field office staff.