Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Foreclosure filings drop in Denver area

Denver Business Journal - by Renee McGaw

Foreclosure filings in the Denver metro area fell nearly 1.6 percent in the third quarter from the same period a year ago, according to data from RealtyTrac Inc.

The Denver-Aurora area had the 47th-highest foreclosure-filing rate among 203 large U.S. urban areas in the first quarter of the year, according to figures released late Tuesday by RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based marketer of foreclosure properties, in its “Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report.”

A total of 9,235 properties in the area were in some stage of the foreclosure process in the July-through-September period, or one per every 113 households, RealtyTrac said. That was up 5.48 percent from the previous quarter, but down nearly 1.6 percent from the third quarter of 2008.

Cities in California, Florida and Nevada accounted for the 10 highest foreclosure rates in the third quarter among metro areas with a population of 200,000 or more. But five of those Top 10 metro areas reported decreasing foreclosure activity from the third quarter of 2008, while many other metro areas with Top 50 foreclosure rates reported sharp increases in foreclosure activity.

“Rising unemployment and a new variety of mortgage resets continued to gradually shift the nation’s foreclosure epicenters in the third quarter away from the hot spots of the last two years and toward some metro areas that had avoided the brunt of the first foreclosure wave,” RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said in a statement. “While toxic subprime mortgages drove much of that first wave of foreclosures, high unemployment and exotic Alt-A Option ARMs are spreading the foreclosure flood to more metro areas in 2009.”

Among the top 50 metro foreclosure rates, the three biggest year-over-year increases were in Boise City-Nampa, Idaho, and Provo-Orem and Salt Lake City in Utah. In several states, the largest increases were posted in cities not previously a focal point for foreclosure activity.

Boulder, for example, experienced a 34 percent increase in foreclosures compared with the previous quarter, and a nearly 46 percent increase compared with the same quarter a year ago, according to RealtyTrac’s data. Boulder had 551 properties with foreclosure filings in the first quarter, or one in 224 households, and ranked 98th out of 203 cities, RealtyTrac said.

Colorado Springs ranked 56th on RealtyTrac’s list, and Fort Collins-Loveland ranked 52nd.

Greeley, at No. 33, was the highest-ranking Colorado city on the Q3 list, with 1,234 properties in foreclosure, or one for every 75 households.

Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., topped the national list with one out of every 20 properties in foreclosure, followed by Merced, Calif. (1 in 27); Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. (1 in 27); Stockton, Calif. (1 in 28); Modesto, Calif. (1 in 30); and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. (1 in 30).

RealtyTrac listed 203 metro areas with populations of 200,000 or more.

RealtyTrac’s metro-areas report parallels its much publicized state-by-state foreclosure rankings. The company’s Q3 ranking for Colorado showed the state had the ninth-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Colorado officials for years have disputed the state’s high position on RealtyTrac’s lists, particularly after Colorado’s foreclosure rate was described as the worst in the nation for most of 2006.

State officials have argued that the way Colorado’s public trustees report foreclosure data leads private entities like RealtyTrac to overcount foreclosures here. RealtyTrac has said its methodology is fair. But RealtyTrac officials won’t reveal many details of how it counts foreclosures, saying that it’s proprietary information.

State lawmakers last session passed a bill that would standardize the way Colorado reports foreclosure numbers. The state Division of Housing now reports monthly foreclosure data for selected areas within the state, as well as statewide quarterly foreclosure data.

On Oct. 8, state officials reported a 71.9 percent surge in Colorado urban-area foreclosure filings in September — to 3,480 filings, from 2,024 in September 2008. The big increase was partly due to a change in laws that temporarily reduced new filings last year, state officials said.

The report covered the seven counties of the Denver metro area, plus El Paso, Larimer, Mesa, Pueblo and Weld counties.

RealtyTrac’s numbers may differ from the state’s in part because the state numbers reflected only September, not the entire quarter, said Ryan McMaken, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, on Tuesday.

State-reported data also distinguishes filings from completed foreclosures, while RealtyTrac counts foreclosures at all stages of the process.

(Mark Harden contributed to this story)