Real Estate is not in recovery mode yet folks !
Nearly one out of three home sales (31 percent) in the first quarter of 2010 were of foreclosed homes, according to a report Tuesday night by RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine-based online marketplace for foreclosure properties.
The average sales price of properties that sold while in some stage of foreclosure was nearly 27 percent below the average sales price of properties not in the foreclosure process.
A total of 232,959 U.S. properties in some stage of foreclosure — default, scheduled for auction or bank-owned (REO) — sold to third parties in the first quarter, a decrease of 14 percent from the previous quarter and down 33 percent from the peak during the first quarter of 2009, when sales of foreclosure homes accounted for 37 percent of all residential sales.
The average sales prices on properties in some stage of foreclosure decreased 23 percent from 2006 to 2009 while the average discounts on foreclosure purchases steadily increased from 21 percent in 2006 to 27 percent in the first quarter of 2010.
Discounts on REOs are larger than discounts on pre-foreclosures, although discounts on pre-foreclosures appear to be trending higher as short sales become more common.
California posted the second highest percentage, with foreclosure sales accounting for 51 percent of all sales there in the first quarter — up slightly from 50 percent in the previous quarter but down from 70 percent of all sales in the first quarter of 2009.
