Thursday, November 12, 2009

RealtyTrac: Sharp foreclosure decline in Colorado

Denver Business Journal - by Mark Harden

Colorado saw a sharp decline in home foreclosures in October, both from the previous month and from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac Inc.'s latest monthly "U.S. Foreclosure Market Report."

A total of 5,047 Colorado properties were in some stage of the foreclosure process in October, down 18.75 percent from September and down 6.08 percent from October 2008, according to data released late Wednesday MST by RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based marketer of foreclosed properties.

Colorado saw one foreclosure filing for every 421 homes in October, the 11th-highest rate in the nation among the 50 states, down from ninth in September and eighth in August, RealtyTrac said.

But Colorado's relatively high ranking among the states is misleading, because the top few states on the RealtyTrac list accounted for most U.S. foreclosures in October. Colorado's foreclosure rate as calculated by the company was better than the one-in-385 rate for the nation as a whole.

RealtyTrac said four states accounted for 52 percent of the nation’s total housing foreclosure activity in October: California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan.

And Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate as it has for three years, with one in every 80 households in foreclosure, the report said.

The good news for the nation as a whole was a 3.3 percent decline in home-foreclosure filings between September and October -- the third straight month-over-month drop. The bad news is, U.S. foreclosures were up 18.86 percent from the year-ago October.

"Three consecutive monthly declines is unprecedented for our report, and on first blush an indication that the foreclosure tide may be turning," RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said in a statement. RealtyTrac.

"However, the fundamental forces driving foreclosure activity in this housing downturn — high-risk mortgages, negative equity, and unemployment — continue to loom over any nascent recovery," Saccacio said. "And despite all the efforts and resources directed at helping homeowners avoid foreclosure, we continue to see foreclosure activity levels that are substantially higher than a year ago in most states."

Colorado officials have long disputed the state's often high position on RealtyTrac's monthly lists, arguing that RealtyTrac overcounts its foreclosures in this state partly because Colorado's public trustees report foreclosures at each stage of the process.

Colorado ranked first in RealtyTrac's monthly foreclosure-rate ranking for most of 2006. But Nevada moved into the top spot in 2007 and has held it ever since.

RealtyTrac officials contend their methodology is fair.

"If more than one foreclosure document is received for a property during the month, only the most recent filing is counted in the report," RealtyTrac said in a statement.

RealtyTrac's data covers housing foreclosure data in all three phases of foreclosure — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repositions — according to the company. RealtyTrac collects data from more than 2,200 U.S. counties, which account for more than 90 percent of the country’s population.

Click here for the full RealtyTrac foreclosure report for October.

Renee McGaw contributed reporting.