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Monday, August 15, 2011

Can Turning Foreclosures Into Rental Properties Save The Housing Market?

Earlier this week, the federal government put out a request for ideas [1] on how to transform some of the roughly 250,000 [2] government-owned foreclosed homes into rental properties.

The goal is to create more options in an increasingly expensive rental market [3], while dealing with the glut of foreclosed homes dragging down the housing market.

In the first six months of this year, more than 1 million properties [4] had foreclosure filings against them. About 800,000 foreclosed properties are owned by banks, and roughly a third of those belong to the federal government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

About 20 percent of those 800,000 properties are on the market, according to RealtyTrac [5], a foreclosure data service. Each month, 50,000 to 60,000 foreclosed properties are sold, according to RealtyTrac, but a slightly higher number are added to the market. In other words, sales aren't making a dent in the total inventory of foreclosed homes, and in high-foreclosure-areas, empty houses are doing damage to neighborhood property values.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is just yet another of Obamas power grabs. Obama want the government to runs each and every aspect of your life.
When the government gets into the rental busieness, the private homeowners will be pitted against the government.