A little good news.

Sales of distressed homes accounted for about a third of the Tampa Bay housing market in January, a lower percentage than recorded a year earlier.

First American CoreLogic defines a distressed sale as either a short sale (selling your home for less than the mortgage with the permission of the bank) or an REO (banked-owned listing).

In places like Pasco County, conventional home sellers have had to compete against rows of foreclosure homes and have priced their properties accordingly. That my best explanation for the smaller share of distressed sales.

Why go distressed if you can get the rest?

Unfortunately, First American has flagged what it says is the start of another surge in sales of distressed sales. Still, Florida's sluggishly adversarial foreclosure process guarantees fewer distressed properties on the market:

Although the top 10 markets for foreclosures are all located in Florida, only two Florida markets, Orlando and Cape Coral, made the top 10 distressed sale list. The most likely reason: Florida is a judicial state where foreclosures process through the courts and take quite a bit longer than in California, Arizona or Nevada, where non-judicial foreclosures are the norm.