UPDATE 2-US FDIC's Bair: Banks, housing past crisis stage

* Bair says banks, housing market in clean-up stage

* Hopes for first legacy loan sale by early June

* Banks may be able to get equity stakes in pools of loans (Adds Bair, Dugan comments about reform, byline)

By Karey Wutkowski

WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - Banks and the U.S. housing market are past the crisis stage and are now on a path to recovery, a top U.S. regulator said on Thursday.

"We're in the clean-up stage now," Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, said at a financial reform conference.

Bair said the FDIC hopes to have a pilot sale for its legacy loan program in early June, and anticipates that the sale will be in the range of about $1 billion of banks' distressed loans.

The legacy loan program is part of the bigger Public-Private Investment Program, which is designed to take up to $1 trillion of troubled assets off banks' balance sheets.

Bair also said she was seeing "glimmers of hope" in the housing market, especially in California.