More than 3,000 real estate agents surveyed across the country were asked what’s really going on with the current real estate market, and according to them, distressed home sales, including REO properties, accounted for more than 47 percent of the total market in September of this year. Since August. Inside Mortgage Finance, along with Campbell Surveys, surveyed agents, who also revealed that REO sales were up sharply month-over-month.

Those REO sales will continue to make up a large part of real estate activity as, despite recent controversies over how banks and mortgage lenders were handling foreclosures, a nationwide moratorium now seems out of the question. On Wednesday, October 20, the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, said that these foreclosure problems that occur in some mortgage companies are not “systemic problems.”

“Where mistakes or mistakes have been made, we will hold those entities, those institutions, accountable for stopping those processes, reviewing and correcting them as quickly as possible,” Donovan said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also weighed in on the Obama administration’s view that a national moratorium on foreclosures would be “dangerous” and will not be implemented.

“We’ve talked, over the last week or so, about the danger that we see in… stopping the entire housing market and the danger that it would provide, or potentially provide to a large extent, and its effect on the economy,” Gibbs said.

Most experts agree that the vast majority of homeowners currently in foreclosure are, in fact, delinquent and have been unable to pay their mortgages.

There are also too many REO homes in the pipeline to ignore. Three of the largest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America — reported they had more than $20 billion in single-family mortgages already converted to REO properties or in foreclosure.

JPMorgan Chase has the largest volume of REO homes at $21.7 billion. It also has $43.4 billion in overdue mortgages. Bank of America has $20.3 billion in REO and $54.6 billion in overdue mortgages.

And there are billions more in REO properties with smaller banks, like Citibank with $6.3 billion in foreclosures and $19.2 billion in overdue mortgages.

With hundreds of billions of dollars in potential REO listings yet to come, the demand for qualified REO agents and professionals to handle those properties will continue to grow.