There are a lot of ways to report on foreclosure statistics, most of them inaccurate. This is because most foreclosured homes go through several steps on their way to the final sale from the bank to a new owner, so statistics frequently overcount actual foreclosures.

I think the best way to look at foreclosures is to measure what % of sales in a given time period were sold by a bank versus sold by a regular (non foreclosed) seller. This measure helps show both the size of the foreclosure problem AND its size relative to the non-foreclosure market.

There is a lot of great discussion about foreclosures going on at Zillow in our "Discussions".

So without further ado, here are some fascinating charts. I have these for every county in the country, so if you want to see yours, just email me.

Here's the entire US (reminder -- here is a lot of data on US house values):

Foreclosures in Maricopa County (Phoenix) (and again, a reminder -- here is data on Phoenix real estate)

Los Angeles County foreclosures (and here's data on LA real estate):