THE ECONOMY: Renting Out Government-Owned Homes

Renting out REO properties would be a drop in the bucket -- it wouldn't clear much of the housing inventory and wouldn't ease rising urban rents, but it would help shore up neighborhoods where housing prices took the biggest slide, and that makes it worthwhile.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is considering proposals for selling government-owned homes to investors, who would then turnaround and sell or rent them out. (The official request for policy ideas is here.) It's hoped that this move would help government agencies earn some much-needed revenue, boost neighborhood home values by getting buyers or renters into vacant homes and ease tight rental markets by expanding the supply of rental housing.

Even though Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are national agencies, housing markets are local, which means that the vacant, foreclosed properties they own are concentrated in regions that were hit hardest by the housing crisis. Among larger metro areas, these agencies own the most foreclosed property - known as REO (real estate owned) - in Las Vegasand Atlanta, after adjusting for metro area size. Several metros in Arizona, Michigan and California are also among the top 20 metros where the government owns a lot of homes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jed-kolko/renting-out-governmentown_b_1119060.html