Foreclosures almost 10% of Minn. home sales at end of 2010

The foreclosure research firm RealtyTrac says in a new report that foreclosures accounted for almost 10 percent of all residential home sales in Minnesota in the last three months of 2010.

That number represents a 70 percent drop in the number of foreclosure sales compared to the same period the previous year.

But Daren Blomquist from Realtytrac said even though foreclosure sales are going down, the inventory of available foreclosures that have not been sold is going up.

"So it's not a reflection that there is a lower inventory for foreclosures, it's a reflection of some of the foreclosure processing controversy that has caused a lot of lenders to slow down," Blomquist said.

Blomquist said the housing market is struggling to absorb the inventory of foreclosed properties and that is keeping prices depressed.

"Unfortunately, at least in the short term, that is going to mean that home prices are not going to recover very quickly until we have really cleared the inventory of foreclosures," he said.

Nationally, foreclosures made up nearly 26 percent of all residential sales in the U.S. last year. More than 831,000 U.S. residential properties were either owned by banks or in some stage of foreclosure in 2010.

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