Based on the average prices provided by RealtyTrac, the prices of distressed homes do not appear to recovering as fast as home prices nationally. The average price of a foreclosure related sale was down a slight 1 percent quarter over quarter but up 3 percent from a year ago, the fourth straight quarter with an annual price increase.

The market share of "distressed" homes – those sold while in some stage of foreclosure, or pre-foreclosure "short sales" – fell to 35 percent of the overall market in the first quarter of 2013, a reduction from both the previous quarter and the first quarter of 2012.

Foreclosure-related home sales fell to a 21 percent share of all home sales during the first quarter of this year; according to RealtyTrac, 190,121 homes sold during the quarter were either bank-owned (REO) or in some stage of foreclosure, down 18 percent from the number of such sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 22 percent lower than in the first quarter of 2012.

Another 15 percent of residential sales in the first quarter were "short sales," in which the bank agrees to take less than the outstanding balance to satisfy the loan, even if the property is not in foreclosure. Non-foreclosure short sales were down 10 percent from the previous quarter and 35 percent from the same quarter in 2012.

Distressed home sales peaked in the first quarter of 2009, when they accounted for 45 percent of the home sale market.

Both types of foreclosure related sales decreased from the previous quarter and from the first quarter of 2012. Pre-foreclosure sales (typically short sales) numbered 88,750, down 20 percent from both the previous quarter and a year earlier, reaching the lowest quarterly number of pre-foreclosure sales since the third quarter of 2009.

These sales had a 10 percent market share compared to 11 percent in the first quarter of 2012.