North Dakota Foreclosures

Mar 16, 2009 | Filed under: foreclosures

When people think of North Dakota two things generally come to mind. Those are Indian reservations on great rolling prairies and the movie Fargo. One of those two is actually an accurate representation of the area and the other is not.

One thing that may come as a huge surprise to you during these uncertain times in the real estate market is that the foreclosure rate in North Dakota is almost not there. December, which is notoriously bad on foreclosure rates at any time in history, saw the state of North Dakota turn in a total number of new foreclosures of 44 units.

Yes, you read that right and it is not a typo. During the month of December 2008 the state of North Dakota had 44 new properties fall into foreclosure. Neighboring Minnesota had just over 2,400, California in that month did nearly 90,000 new foreclosures and North Dakota had 44.

That is fantastic new here and what is more phenomenal is that those numbers stayed pretty level since this crisis started and it is predicted to remain fairly steady and level for what the economists consider the foreseeable future.

A lot of this is due to the fact that a good portion of the property in these prairie states has been paid off and mortgage free for generations and most of the land is owned in huge acreage tracts of ranch prairie so there is little danger of the same foreclosure issues hitting these states as is prevalent in the rest of the country.

What little land you will find in foreclosure here is located near places like Fargo and Bismarck and is likely to be newer construction. As indicated above, the experts do not see the numbers changing much here so this is a state that you can expect to look hard in to find what you want and it will likely be more difficult to sell once the nation recovers from the crisis.