Did you know the FDIC sells real estate?

WASHINGTON — Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. real-estate sales this year are the highest since 1994 as the regulator takes over properties held by failed lenders.

The FDIC raised $727 million from building and land sales in the first nine months of 2009 compared with $1.16 billion in all of 1994, according to FDIC data. The agency sold 1,706 properties, according to its website, the highest number since 2,045 in 1996.

The failure of 148 lenders since 2007 is giving homebuyers and real-estate investors the chance to purchase office buildings, undeveloped land for houses and even gas stations from the FDIC. The agency may also have hundreds of millions of dollars in loans for sale from shuttered banks.

"It seems that they're a little understaffed and they're very busy trying to fold a bank a weekend or five banks a weekend," Barry Sternlicht, chairman and chief executive of Starwood Property Trust, said on a conference call Monday.

The FDIC real-estate sales are helping companies including CB Richard Ellis Group and closely held Prescient, which are brokering transactions, and J.P. King Auction, which has held FDIC auctions in Detroit and Atlanta.

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