Here's the normal situation. A corporation wants to promote or otherwise transfer an employee from one location to another. They typically pay moving costs as part of the transfer. The plans I've seen also will backstop the employee in case they are unable to sell their old home. I think this is done by having at least one independent appraisal done on the property. If after some period of time (90 days after the transfer date comes to mind) the home doesn't sell for that amount, the corporation buys it and takes over the sales process.

It's quite possible that the 58,000 per home that was lost includes the cost of hiring a property maintenance firm to provide security and basic maintenance. In a declining market, the sale price might not reach the appraised value either. In fact, once the people move out, the value probably dropped since it is now a distressed sale.

That's normal and proper. Otherwise, you would have employees who would have to refuse transfers and promotions because they couldn't sell their home.

I don't see anything out of the ordinary with what your postal service is doing. The article doesn't talk about all the employees who were moved and managed to sell their properties without the postal service buying them. I'm quite sure that a larger percentage was in that situation.

There just weren't enough facts in the article to tell me whether the postal service was handling this more poorly than private corporations.