RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties and real estate data, Thursday said a total of 190,121 U.S. properties in some stage of foreclosure or bank-owned, called REO, were sold during the first quarter, down 22 percent from the first quarter of 2012 and a decrease of 18 percent from the previous quarter.
Releasing its first-quarter 2013 U.S. Foreclosure & Short Sales Report, the market researcher said these foreclosure-related sales accounted for 21 percent of all U.S. residential sales during the quarter, down from 25 percent of all sales in the first quarter of 2012 and a decline from a peak of 45 percent of all sales in the first quarter of 2009.
Properties not in foreclosure that sold as short sales in the first quarter accounted for an estimated 15 percent of all residential sales. Non-foreclosure short sales also trended lower in the first quarter, down 10 percent from the previous quarter and down 35 percent from the first quarter of 2012.
States with the biggest percentage of foreclosure-related sales were Georgia with 35 percent, Illinois with 32 percent and California with 30 percent. Arizona and Michigan followed with 28 percent each.
The average price of a foreclosure-related sale was $167,095 in the quarter, down 1 percent from the previous quarter but up 3 percent from a year ago.
Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, said, ''We expected foreclosure-related sales to be lower given the downward trend in new foreclosure activity nationwide over the past two and a half years, but the decrease in non-foreclosure short sales was a bit of a surprise given the 11 million homeowners nationwide still underwater."
Blomquist added that rising home prices in many markets are stunting the continued growth of short sales by reducing incentive for both underwater homeowners and lenders.
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