According to the Metropolitan Foreclosure Report by RealtyTrac, Inc, the Twin Cities real estate market saw an increase of new foreclosures filings by 22%.  This is a 2% decline actually from the last quarter of 2009.

Before you investors start salivating….Keep in mind that even though a foreclosure filing happens on a property, several things can happen.  The owner can pay the past due amount and fix the problem.  They can sell it in a short sale.  If neither of those happen, we need to wait 6 months for the end of the redemption period for the properties to hit the market.

The staggering numbers from the report show that one in every 162 houses in the Twin Cities (only .62%) has at least one foreclosure filing in the database.  This is slightly lower than the .72% national average.  The Twin Cities ranked 80th on the list of large cities (over 200k people) in number of foreclosures.  Of the top 10 cities with the worst foreclosure rates (like cities in California, Florida, Arizona), eight of them reported improvement in foreclosure filings over last year.