
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994                    TAG: 9406080447 
SECTION: BUSINESS                     PAGE: I2    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: By TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940608                                 LENGTH: Medium

RESOLUTION TRUST READY TO SELL HOME FEDERAL SAVINGS

{LEAD} After managing Home Federal Savings Bank for almost two years, the Resolution Trust Corp. has embarked on efforts to sell the failed Norfolk thrift.

How quickly Home is sold will depend partly on the number of prospective bidders who want to study the thrift's books, said Anne Freeman, a Resolution Trust spokeswoman in Washington. However, the disposition of Home should be completed in ``a month or two,'' she said.

{REST} The Resolution Trust, the federally chartered company responsible for disposing of seized savings and loan associations, briefed prospective bidders on Home and on RTC sales procedures at a meeting in Norfolk last Friday.

``We are hoping to be done by the end of summer with all 23 institutions that are left'' in the Resolution Trust's hands, Freeman said.

Home, with six offices and 41 employees, had assets of $85.8 million and $66.8 million of deposits at the end of March.

Organized in 1886 as Berkley Permanent Building and Loan Association, Home once ranked as one of the financially strongest S&Ls in the region.

But like many thrifts during the mid-1980s, Home expanded its lending from mortgages on single-family homes to large residential developments, including the Harbour Place condominiums in downtown Norfolk and the King's Crossing condominiums on the Portsmouth waterfront.

By the time federal regulators had seized Home in July 1992, the institution had been crippled by chronic losses and a serious erosion of capital.

In late May, the Resolution Trust announced that it would give bids from minority investors greater consideration when it auctioned off Home and four other failed thrifts that serve minority neighborhoods.

When a bid from a minority investor is within 10 percent of the highest offer from nonminority bidders, the minority investor will be allowed to match the highest bid, the Resolution Trust said. If that investor matches the highest bid, it will be considered the winner.

The Resolution Trust said it will use this ``matched bid'' process to sell off other thrifts in Philadelphia; Newark, N.J.; Cleveland; and New Orleans. It will also use the procedure to auction off certain branches at five other S&Ls under its control, the Resolution Trust said. by CNB