Fewer Minnesotans are having trouble making the mortgage payment, but overall default rates remain high. The latest data on the subject shows that during October one in every 1,119 Minnesota housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month compared with one in 706 housing units nationwide.

For Minnesota, which had the 20th highest foreclosure rate in the nation, that's a 31 percent decrease from October 2011, but a 34 percent increase from the previous month.

Housing advocates say that while the foreclosure rate is still at troubling levels, a strengthening housing market, a slowly improving economy and widespread efforts to help homeowners avoid foreclosure are all helping suppress foreclosure rates -- at least compared with last year.

RealtyTrac's vice president, Daren Blomquist, said that activity levels vary wildly from state to state depending on seasonal factors and state laws regarding processing of those foreclosues. "We continued to see vastly different foreclosure trends across the country in October, depending primarily on how each state's foreclosing infrastructure was able to handle the high volume of delinquent loans during the worst of the foreclosure crisis in 2010," he said.

The three states with the bigges annual increases in foreclosure activity were also impacted Hurricane Sandy. That included New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

Here's a link to the full report.