The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that it will sell 40,000 distressed loans to investors in 2013 in the hopes of recovering losses on claims against the Federal Housing Administration Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, HousingWire reported Dec. 3.

HUD has been selling loans since this fall when it unloaded 5,300 nonperforming loans in six different national pools Sept. 12. The total unpaid principal balance of those loans was $950 million. A second sell-off took place Sept. 27 and included 4,100 loans in seven different Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome pools with a total unpaid principal balance of $770 million, HousingWire reported.

The September NSO loans came from some of the nation’s hardest hit areas, including Chicago, Newark, N.J., Phoenix and Tampa, Fla.

The next distressed loan sale will take place sometime in the first quarter of 2013, and will include 10,000 to 15,000 loans in NSO pools in metro areas of California, Florida, Georgia and Ohio.

FHA Acting Commissioner Carol Galante said that “this program supports two very important objectives — it supports communities hardest hit by the housing crisis and it saves considerable money for FHA’s insurance fund,” HousingWire reported.