The estate of Lehman Bros. is boosting sales of its commercial properties as prices improve. The failed investment bank now expects to recover $13.2 billion from its real estate portfolio between 2011 and 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported.

That’s up from a $12.1 billion expectation in January, according to court filings, and the revision could help creditors of the defunct firm.

Recently, Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. entered into an agreement to sell its majority interest in a portfolio of 10 office buildings in Rosslyn, Va., to a private-equity fund run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Though the $1.26 billion transaction represents a slight loss for Lehman, the price is much higher than the properties would have commanded a year or two earlier, due to a recovery in commercial property prices.

Alvarez & Marsal Holdings LLC – Lehman’s estate manager – is ramping up its effort to dispose of the remaining $13.2 billion worth of property assets that were on the books at the beginning of the year.

In September 2008, at the height of the economic downturn that led Lehman Bros. to file for bankruptcy protection, the financial giant’s real estate holdings were valued at $23 billion. Between its bankruptcy filing that fall and the end of 2010, Lehman recovered only $3 billion from its real estate portfolio, the Journal reported.

Creditors are poised to recover from Lehman’s estate a total of about $65 billion, a fraction of what the Wall Street firm was once worth.