By William E. Gibson, Washington Correspondent
Sales are brisk for South Florida homes hawked by the federal government in the wake of the Great Recession.
Uncle Sam and two government-sponsored companies are unloading property, from waterside mansions to burned-out shells, often at fire-sale prices 10 percent to 20 percent below market value.
The wave of foreclosed property in distressed regions like South Florida has forced the government, along with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to become major movers of real estate to clear a growing inventory of empty homes.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., an agency set up during the Great Depression to protect depositors from bank failures, sold 1,706 properties across the country in the first nine months of this year, far more than in any year since 1996.
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