GMAC Financial Services, a lender that has received $12.5 billion in government bailouts, posted a third straight quarterly loss on Wednesday, hurt by red ink in its mortgage business.

The third-quarter net loss for Detroit-based GMAC was $767 million, compared with a loss of $2.5 billion a year earlier.

GMAC’s auto finance unit had a profit of $395 million in the quarter, while its mortgage operations posted a loss of $747 million.

The lender has struggled as the deteriorating auto and housing markets have caused financing volume to decline and credit losses to increase. GMAC’s owners include automaker General Motors and the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP.

GMAC said that during the quarter some businesses — including its U.S. consumer property and casualty insurance business and some financing business in Argentina, the UK and Italy — were classified as discontinued operations.

Excluding those businesses, its loss from continuing operations was $671 million, it said.

"We continue to work through solutions for certain legacy assets, and that is still weighing on GMAC’s financial performance,” Chief Executive Alvaro de Molina said in a statement.

GMAC, the traditional lender to GM dealers and customers, converted to a bank holding company in December to become eligible for bailout money the U.S. Treasury was pumping into banks.

The company, which is taking over the auto loan business of Chrysler, has been reported in talks with the Treasury for a third cash infusion as it approaches a deadline to implement a plan to enhance its capital.

GMAC’s consolidated cash and cash equivalents fell to $14.2 billion at the end of the third quarter from $18.7 billion at June 30.

Retail deposits at GMAC’s Ally Bank rose to $15.9 billion from $14.5 billion at the end of the second quarter.