Housing industry has mixed feelings on turning foreclosures into rentals

The housing industry gave mixed reviews to the Obama administration's proposal to sell tens of thousands of foreclosed properties owned by government-backed entities and then convert them to rentals, reported the Wall Street Journal on its blog.

Some welcomed the administration's "request for information," published Wednesday to solicit views on proposals to convert foreclosures into rentals, because demand for rental properties is rising even as home prices decline.

The solicitation was aimed primarily at investors. Putting homes "in the hands of people who can take care of them and rent them out" would stabilize prices sooner and save taxpayer money, said John Burns of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Irvine, Calif.

But others weren’t as positive. After federal agencies sold thousands of homes in the early 1990s to investors in California's Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, "you ended up with major sections of entire neighborhoods that just weren't being cared for" and had higher crime rates, said John Husing, an economist in Redlands, Calif.

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