SLM Corp., the student lender known as Sallie Mae, will have an after-tax loss of about $85 million to $95 million on a sale of mortgages and properties seized in foreclosures, reflecting missteps in the company's bid to profit from distressed assets.

The fourth-quarter expense will stem from an Oct. 22 sale of almost all of the mortgage- and real-estate assets of SLM's GRP Loan LLC and GRP Strategies LLC units, the Reston, Virginia- based company said today in a regulatory filing.

The holdings were probably acquired as part of SLM's effort to translate its experience in collecting on bad student loans into a broader business, an initiative that the company has previously said it was winding down, according to Adam Steer, a New York-based analyst for CreditSights Inc.

The latest loss from the exit will be "fairly sizable," he said in a telephone interview today. "With that said, this is not a core earnings hit."

The buyer of the assets, Credit Suisse Group AG's DLJ Mortgage Capital Inc., paid $278.7 million, according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SLM will guarantee certain "post-closing obligations" of the GRP units in relation to the assets, such as requirements they buy back assets whose quality fails to match their representations.

SLM was unchanged in trading after the regular session of the New York Stock Exchange. Earlier, the shares fell 37 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $10.09. The company on Oct. 20 reported third-quarter net income of $159 million, its first profit after four straight quarters of losses.

Martha Holler, an SLM spokeswoman, and Bruce Corwin, a Credit Suisse spokesman, didn't immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.

SLM shut its distressed real-estate business in the third quarter of last year, Chief Executive Officer Albert Lord said during a conference call this April about the 2009 first quarter. The latter period included a $75 million markdown of related assets.

During the quarter that the wind-down began, "we actually at the time thought we had nearly finished writing it down," Lord said on that call. "Sales and markdowns have cut that portfolio almost in half to $533 million, but even now we still see values deteriorate at a couple percent a month."