MyFox Memphis - A year and a half after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA is auctioning off at fire-sale prices thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile-home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices.

Mobile home dealers are finding that some potential customers would rather wait to make a deal on a used FEMA trailer than drop $25,000 to $40,000 for a brand-new one.

“People think they’re just going to get to buy them for nothing,” said Gale Crews, owner of Diamond State Mobile Home
Sales in Hope, where FEMA is storing 20,000 trailers at the city’s airport. Some of the FEMA trailers will sell for less than half of what they cost new.

Some critics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the sale of emblematic of the way FEMA botched its handling of Katrina:

FEMA ordered more trailers than it needed, it let many of them sit out in the open, exposed to the elements, and now, some fear, it is about to double-cross the trailer dealers.

Posted: 03|8|07 at 9:15 am. Filed under: US News.