Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) single family housing program, focusing on the implementation of its management and marketing contracts.

GAO noted that: (1) HUD has experienced widespread problems with the management and marketing contracts since they started in April 1999; (2) property maintenance and security, which was a problem under HUD's previous property disposition approach, remains a significant problem; (3) although monitoring improvements have aided HUD's ability to detect such problems, these improvements have not had a sufficient impact in remedying them; (4) in addition, older properties have accumulated in inventory as the contractors have focused their sales efforts on the newly acquired, more saleable properties; and (5) also, while HUD encourages contractors to sell properties quickly, it does not provide incentives for the contractors to focus on properties that have been in inventory for a long period of time.