John Rebchook is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter with more than 30 years of experience in writing and communications... 
By John Rebchook, on November 19th, 2009As I blogged earlier this morning, foreclosure filings in Colorado rose almost 18 percent to 35,112 in the first nine months of this year, compared with 29,852 during the same period in 2008.
And while the number of foreclosure closings – those that have completed the entire process and have been sold by public trustees – is down 7.9 percent from a year earlier, the rise in filings concerns experts that another wave of foreclosures could hit next year.
“New foreclosure filings are at a peak again,” said Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, which released the report.
“That question is, what does this mean for the future? All of these filings…at some point might continue down the foreclosure path all the way to auctions,” held by public trustees, he continued.
He noted that the number of foreclosure sales “are muted now,” but that may not be a trend that is sustainable.
Ron Woodcock, a broker with RE/MAX Southeast, and an expert on short sales, said that recently banks have been faster and better at accepting approvals for the transactions, in which they agree to accept less than the full amount of the mortgage at the sale.
But he advises all of his clients to try to modify their loans before they entertain the notion of a short sale. Lenders will look at lowering interest rates, sometimes extending the lenght of the mortgage to as much as 40 years, which lowers monthly payments. Sometimes they’ll even lower the principal amount.
He said many lenders have beefed up their loan-mitigation departments to deal with increased demand.
“My personal experience is that is not as much of an ordeal as early this year,” Woodcock said. “It was bad. But this may be short-lived. I’m expecting we may be right back where we were earlier this year at the beginning of next year,” because of the influx of new foreclosure filings.
Shannon Peer, of the non-profit Brothers Redevelopment in Edgewater, said that what he is hearing from people who are in danger of losing their homes, that lenders are becoming more aggressive in helping distressed homeowners with loan modifications on a trial basis, but are not as quick as making them permanent.
“If you go back to June, when there were all these stories about no trial modifications in effect, and the banks were just in the process of implementing them and getting them ramped up,” he said. “Now, they have the manpower and the technical ability to do it, but they are not going from the trial programs to the permanent loan modifications as fast as we would like.”
And Stephanie Riggi, manager of the Colorado Foreclosure Hotline’s call center, said that calls to the hotline have increased about 40 percent from where they were a year earlier. She said that four out of five people who complete counseling with their HUD-approved counselors, avoid foreclosures. She also is seeing a surge in people calling who are current on their mortgage payments, but want to take preventative measures to keep their homes.
“I think people are much more sophisticated and aware of programs available to them than they were in the past,” Riggi said.
Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865
