Distressed Homes Make Up a Quarter of Home Sales

About one in four home sales during the first quarter of this year was in some form of foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. A growing number of those distressed sales were also from short sales, the newly released report shows.

 Distressed properties—either bank-owned, in default, or scheduled for auction—accounted for 26 percent of all residential sales during the first three months of this year, which is up 8 percent from the previous quarter, according to RealtyTrac. Short sales made up a bigger bulk of that number—12 percent of all home sales—and reached a three-year high during the first quarter of this year. The percentage of short sales rose 25 percent compared to a year earlier.

Short sales in the first quarter sold for an average price of $175,461 (which is the lowest average ever recorded by RealtyTrac since 2005). Meanwhile, foreclosures in the first quarter sold for an average of $161,214, which is 27 percent below the average price of a non-foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. "Lenders are approving more aggressively priced short sales, which in turn is resulting in more successful short sale transactions," says Brandon Moore, chief executive of RealtyTrac.


 Source: “Foreclosures Made up 26% of U.S. Home Sales in First Quarter,” CNNMoney (May 31, 2012)

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