Fortress Investment Group and Deutsche Bank, whose executives played roles in the housing bubble, are among the hundreds of firms that responded to a U.S. government request for proposals to rent out foreclosed homes.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) asked for ideas as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies seized by the government in 2008, seek to reduce losses, stabilize neighborhoods and support housing values by turning into rentals a portion of the more than 180,000 repossessed homes in their inventory. The submissions were due by Sept. 15.

Carrington Holding, Barclays Capital, Neuberger Berman Group, Ranieri Partners and UBS also were among the financial and investment companies that responded to the FHFA, according to a list of 439 proposals. The agency released the names in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Bloomberg News.

"We're obviously big proponents of this program," said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of Carrington in Santa Ana, Calif. "We think it meets a market need."

Demand for rentals is rising as more homeowners lose their properties to foreclosure and fewer buyers qualify for mortgages. About 6 million homes with a current market value of $750 billion will be repossessed by banks or sold at distressed prices by 2016, according to Oliver Chang, a San Francisco-based analyst at Morgan Stanley. FHFA's plans for a foreclosure-to- rental program are significant because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac service more than half of U.S. home mortgages, he said.

"In our opinion, this is the most important housing-related program under consideration," Chang wrote in a Dec. 6 note to investors. "The hope is that a larger unified program is established that could move the needle a year or two down the road."

The FHFA won't discuss specific submissions or give a firm timeline for structuring its program, said spokeswoman Corinne Russell. "FHFA is proceeding prudently but with a sense of urgency to lay the groundwork for the development of good initial transactions in early 2012," she said in an email.

Fannie Mae had 122,616 foreclosed homes on its books with a carrying value of $11 billion as of Sept. 30, costing $733 million to maintain in the third quarter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Freddie Mac controlled 59,616 foreclosed homes that cost the company $221 million to operate and manage in the third quarter.

Carrington, a real estate and mortgage-services company founded by hedge-fund manager Bruce Rose, is "actively raising" about $1 billion to purchase foreclosed homes that will be renovated and held as rentals, with or without the government program, said Sharga.

He said that Carrington's submission outlined three options for turning foreclosures to rentals in bulk: selling directly to investors who agree to repair and hold the properties as rentals, hiring managers to oversee rentals to be sold at a later date, or structuring transactions so the government and investors share revenue from seized properties.

"At the end of a period, you'd sell the property and split the proceeds," said Sharga, whose company collects mortgage payments and manages about 4,000 rental homes, including properties repossessed by Fannie Mae.

The FHFA received more than 4,000 submissions, about 10 percent of which were considered valid, according to a Nov. 30 agency statement. Among the proposals were joint-venture partnerships, sales, auctions and asset-disposition strategies similar to those used by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as well as by the Resolution Trust Corp. after the savings-and-loan collapse of the early 1990s, the agency said.

The agency provided five examples of submissions with the content, names and contact information redacted. That information was withheld to protect trade secrets and the privacy of people who submitted proposals, the agency said.

No contracts will be awarded based on the submissions, which "will be used for planning and market research purposes only," the FHFA said in its solicitation for proposals.