Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you very much. (Operator instructions) And we'll take the first question from Steven Alexopoulos. Your line is live.
Steven Alexopoulos
Hi, everyone.
Richard Anthony
Hi, Steven.
Steven Alexopoulos
Is it that possible for the $541 million of the non-performing loans that you break out has been FAS 114 loans. How much have they been written down by an average?
Kevin Howard
Okay. We have Mark.
Mark Holladay
It's about 22% write-down about $120 million.
Steven Alexopoulos
Okay. And when we think about the non-performers is the game plan here just to sell them? I'm just wondering if you really quickly convert through almost a billion of non-performers here in a reasonable time frame?
Mark Holladay
Well that really depends with the TARP. What we're looking at is – and I think what the government's looking at is a flexibility and the ability to move those in a more rational fashion and I think that's kind of where we're headed. We do think our current strategy for '09 is to exit about $125 million per quarter, combination of sales, and existing exits that we've got. We're exiting in a natural fashion. Right now about $60 million per quarter and the rest has been through other activities.
Richard Anthony
Steven let me add a little to this subject. We have – we're in the process of centralizing special assets. And under special assets will be our disposition strategy. So we're going to be making decisions quicker and really at the corporate level concerning all of these distressed assets throughout our footprint. We're going to have, probably four or five key techniques. You'll continue to see absolute auctions. We feel that results we've gotten there have justified continuing on. But this one that's taking place now probably will be it until we get to the late winter or early spring. We will look harder at note sales, whole loan sales. We have the one that I mentioned in the works. But there will be more bulk sale possibilities that come from the – really, the funds and the – and the money that's been pooled for this purpose that – that is contacting us on a regular basis. Short sales continue to be an option for houses in Atlanta. That is a technique that is effective and we will be using that.
There are some other techniques that have been presented to us that we're studying that might involve some disposition of assets, but retention of some contingent positions so that if there is upside realized we could participate to some degree. So there are new techniques that are emerging as we go through this cycle, and as I say, these pools of money are being accumulated and are sort of being directed toward banks. I think you're going to see more innovation taking place on the way assets are disposed of in the future than has been the case in the past. And then our asset disposition strategy is going to be more still directed toward the houses as opposed to the developed lots. It's just still not a good time to really be aggressive there. So as we have some buildup, it's going to occur more with developed lots. I don't find it really tolerable to let the numbers of houses in other real estate continue to accumulate. That's the portion we must aggressively turn and the absolute auction technique is always a tool that can be used there.
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