Study predicts 28,000 Minn. foreclosures this year

Boarded house
Boarded house
MPR Photo/Brandt Williams

A new study suggests there will be 28,282 home foreclosures this year in Minnesota.

That number is on top of more than 38,000 foreclosures that have already occurred over the past three years.

A number of nonprofit affordable housing groups commissioned the report, including the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund.

Housing Fund president, Warren Hanson, says they gathered foreclosure data from every Minnesota county. Hanson says the highest foreclosure rates were in counties surrounding the Twin Cities metro, as well as around Duluth and Rochester.

"With the rising prices of energy, with the tightening of credit, and with the sub-prime mess, which got a lot of people in trouble - buying more home than they could afford - those are the areas that have turned out to be the hardest hit by foreclosures," said Hanson.

Hanson says his group's study is more accurate than a national estimate that came out this week. That national study by Realty Trac suggested only half as many foreclosures in Minnesota as the report Hanson's group commissioned.

A link to the report is available here.