John Rebchook is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter with more than 30 years of experience in writing and communications... Colorado foreclosure activity bucked the national trend in April, but not in a good way.
A national report released today by RealtyTrac ranked Colorado as No. 10 in the nation for its foreclosure rate.
However, even more troubling, Colorado foreclosures rose by 16 percent from a year ago, and 2 percent from March, at a time when overall national foreclosure rate, dropped 2.4 percent year-over-year, and fell by 9 percent from the previous month. The Colorado increases occurred at a time when the Irvine, Calif.-based group was seeing the overall picture brighten.
Ranking not a surprise
Ryan McMaken, of the Colorado Division of Housing, who conducted his own foreclosure reports, including a separate first-quarter report, also released today, says the RealtyTrac report ”puts Colorado in place as a somewhat distant 10th place behind Georgia, which has a much higher rate at 288 households per foreclosure event…However, overall, our own information is showing that while Colorado is not seeing any big increases in foreclosure activity, we see no evidence that foreclosures are going away either. So, the fact that Colorado hasn’t moved much in the Realtytrac rankings should perhaps not be a surprise.” McMaken uses a different methodology than RealtyTrac. (To see how Colorado did in the first quarter, please visit this blog.)
He said the report appears to indicate that some of the other states are moderating the speed with which homes are foreclosing. Statewide, foreclosure rates are not moving much in, so Colorado’s ranking against other states is more a function of how other states are improving or worsening with their foreclosure situations.” McMaken noted that lenders in Colorado a year ago had moratoriums in place, but he believes that was a nationwide policy, so it would not favor Colorado statistically.
“If we look back at last April, however, we do see a very low total for foreclosure sales at auction, and that no doubt is having an effect on the year-over-year percent changes as shown in the Realytrac report,”McMaken said.
U.S. foreclosure activity falling
“April was the first month in the history of our report with an annual decrease in U.S. foreclosure activity,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. He did note that bank repossessions, or REOs, “hit a record monthly high for the report even when the default notices dropped substantially on a monthly and annual basis. We expect a similar pattern to continue for most of this year, with the overall numbers staying at a high level and ripples of activity hitting the various stages of the foreclosure process as lenders systematically work through the backlog of distressed properties.”
The report shows that the percentage of homes in some stage of the foreclosure process in Colorado is very close to the national average. In Colorado, one out of every 337 households is in some stage of the foreclosure process, compared with the national average of one out of 387.
In Colorado, a total of 6,382 were in some stage of foreclosure. The majority of them, 4,218, were in what RealtyTrac calls a Notice of Trustee Sale, or NTS. It also tracked 2,147 REOs in Colorado.
Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.
