It will take at least three years to clear the glut of foreclosed homes in the United States, according to California-based RealtyTrac, which monitors foreclosures and bank-owned property sales.

Across the U.S., foreclosures sales were running at just over 50,000 units per month in the first quarter, but there are 1.3 million foreclosed homes in the current inventory. "It would take three years to take up this inventory at today's sales pace," RealtyTrac stated. But that is only if less homes are foreclosed and sales remain constant. 

In Arizona, a popular destination for Western Canadian buyers, 45 per cent of all home sales in the first quarter of this year were foreclosures, RealtyTrac found. Both California and Nevada also reported foreclosures sales accounting for 45% or higher of all sales during the first quarter, at and least a dozen other states saw foreclosures accounting for more than one-third of all residential sales.

The average price of a U.S. house sold in foreclosure this year is US$158,000, the RealTrac study found.