Ex-Official to Publish S&L; Assets U.S. Is Selling : Liquidation: Readers of the newsletter will learn what properties the government is offering from its multibillion- dollar portfolio.

DANA POINT —  A former federal banking liquidator is publishing a newsletter that tells readers what properties the government is planning to sell from its multibillion-dollar portfolio of failed savings and loan assets.

In the process, Richard S. Fenning said he also may be able to help the federal government keep track of the properties sold through the Resolution Trust Corp., the agency charged with managing failed thrifts and selling their assets.

With a computer and a knack for knowing where to go for information, Fenning said he is providing a comprehensive list of bank and thrift assets being sold by the RTC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Thrift Supervision.

His Federal Liquidation Report is not cheap, though. The biweekly publication, which may go weekly next month, carries a subscription price of $395 a year.

Regulators, he said, often provide notice of sales too late for many potential buyers--from small investors to large, healthy financial institutions--to act. The agencies also schedule sales and, with little notice, postpone them for months, he said.

Fenning, who publishes the newsletter from his Dana Point home, saw a need for such a publication a year ago but couldn’t start one because he was working for the government. Until January, he worked for the FDIC office in Irvine, marketing the assets of failed banks.

“The newsletter helps organize all available assets from all failed thrifts,” he said. “All this information is public, but it takes an extreme amount of effort to get it. All these regulators are busy, and they don’t have time to keep track of everything.”

Now, he said, he is talking with regulators about providing his service to them via computer.

“Nobody does what I do,” Fenning said. “Nobody tracks these sales from inception through post-closing. If the information is available, I will tell you who bought what and for what price.”

That information could be invaluable to the RTC, especially.

Last week, The Times revealed that the year-old agency lacks a central record-keeping system to keep track of properties sold, prices paid and names of buyers. Without such a system, the RTC may be handicapped in detecting potential favoritism, fraud or improper pricing in the sale of thousands of properties.

Eventually, federal agencies are expected to sell $100 billion in real estate alone from failed financial institutions.