Wachovia Acts to Unload Devalued Assets

Wachovia Corp. has begun offloading some of its devalued assets. It’s first move is selling about $40 million of construction loans to LandCap, the Wall Street Journal reports today. The loans purportedly have a book value of $75 million to $80 million.

According to the Journal, LandCap bought the loans out of a pool of about $350 million in such loans that the bank put up for sale earlier this year. The pool is just a fraction of Wachovia’s overall portfolio of construction loans. According to Foresight Analytics LLC, about 9.4% of Wachovia’s $24 billion in construction and land loans were delinquent in the second quarter. That is up from a 7.7% delinquency rate in the first quarter.