Here's good news for the housing market: RealtyTrac said this morning that the number of properties that had received a foreclosure filing during the first quarter in Minnesota was down 18 percent compared with last year. Foreclosures were also down 12 percent from the fourth quarter 2010.
Filings nationwide were down even more, falling 26 percent from last year and 15 percent from the fourth quarter.
All of this is welcome news for the housing market, which has been inundated with foreclosures, causing home prices throughout the nation to fall. What's still unknown, however, is whether these declines are the result of delays in the processing of mortgages that are default. There's still tremendous concern that once lenders have worked their way through legal wranglings with the government over how foreclosures are processed that there could be another wave of foreclosure activity.
