Outcome capture
Outcome capture means following each distress window through to what actually happened, rather than counting the filings that started it.
It is the difference between knowing how many foreclosures began and knowing how many people lost their homes.
Why counting filings is not enough#
A notice of pendency records that a foreclosure has started. It says nothing about the ending.
A substantial share of foreclosures that begin never reach a sheriff's sale — resolved by reinstatement, a modification, a sale, a refinance. And of the sales that do occur, roughly a third end in redemption.
So a count of filings overstates loss, by a margin nobody can quantify without following the windows to their conclusion.
The measurement problem#
Most outcomes are non-events.
A redemption produces a recorded certificate. A failure to redeem produces nothing — under Minn. Stat. 580.12 the sheriff's certificate becomes title by operation of law, silently, on a date.
Capturing that means computing every expiry from every sale, then checking whether a document appeared before it. The absence is the finding.
What the tracker holds#
| Windows | |
|---|---|
| Total tracked | 1,671 |
| Still running | 1,258 |
| Resolved | 326 |
| Unresolved | 87 |
Anchors run from 2014 to the present, covering both sheriff's sale windows and tax judgment windows, which are tracked separately because they run on different clocks — six months against three years.
Unknown is a label, not a gap#
The 87 unresolved windows are recorded as unknown.
That matters methodologically. A tracker that forced every window into a resolved category would produce a complete-looking dataset with fabricated entries in it. Recording what could not be determined keeps the resolved set honest, and it keeps the denominator of any published rate defensible.
Why the pending count is so large#
Because most windows have not finished yet.
1,258 of 1,671 are still inside their period. A rate computed today describes the windows that have resolved, which are disproportionately the earliest ones.
That is not a defect, and it is why every figure published from this data carries its n alongside it. A rate without a denominator is an assertion; a rate with one can be checked, and revised as more windows close.
What it enables#
Everything downstream. Redemption rates. Time-to-outcome distributions. Survival curves. Any statement about what usually happens to a distressed Minnesota property rests on having followed enough of them to the end.