Housing Finance: Budget Savings From the Sale of HUD Loans: RCED-99-203.

Defaults on mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) increased during the 1980s, primarily because of weak real estate markets. By the early 1990s, HUD owned nearly 110,000 single-family and 2,400 multifamily loans that it had insured. In a series of six sales held between 1994 and 1997, HUD sold 98,640 single-family loans and 1,093 multifamily loans. The sales generated more than $2.2 billion in budgetary savings. This report discusses the reasonableness of (1) HUD's estimates of budgetary savings from the sale of its single-family loans and (2) the model HUD used to estimate savings from the sale of multifamily loans. GAO concludes that HUD's estimates of budgetary savings from the sale of the single-family loans it reviewed were reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]