“That is just insane,” Hickenlooper told InsideRealEstateNews.com. “I’ll send them a letter. I’ll call them and demand that they justify where their data came through and walk us through it, or write a correction. If they can’t justify it, it is just plain reckless and can have very serious consequences.” Indeed, one broker today said that he has received more than a dozen calls from agents who work for him that have received calls from concerned home buyers. Others say that articles such the one in Forbes.com could have government agencies such as Fannie Mae could again declare the Denver area as “declining market,” causing mortgage rates to rise and making it more difficult to obtain loans.

Reporter explains story

Meanwhile, the author of the Forbes.com article, Francesca Levy, sent InsideRealEstateNews.com an e-mail today to put her article into perspective. She relied on information from Zillow.com, a popular online service that lists millions of homes for sale across the country, as the basis for her article.

“I’ve gotten a lot of response from folks in Denver about this article and completely understand why the metro’s inclusion on the list would come as a surprise,”  Levy wrote. “I understand that these numbers don’t jibe personal observations of many realtors and perhaps the local data that’s available to them. By many measures, as you know, the Denver market is doing quite well, and certainly it’s doing well relative to other metros. But this story was based on a fairly narrow set of metrics in which Denver showed a big change over time. There are many different standpoints from which to look at the market, and inventory/sales rates are only a couple of them.” Levy went on to say that one reason she uses Zillow is because it is “extremely hard to find solid inventory data from anyone besides Zillow that compares large MSAs across the country. I’m always looking for new data sources, and I like to be able to compare the same metrics from different data providers – unfortunately that’s hard to do with inventory, since the information is scarce.” Levy added that her story had stirred so much response, that she is “tempted to do a whole story” on what is going on in the Denver market. She also said that her story said it was only tracking single-family home inventory, but it also included condos, so she will ask Forbes to issue a correction to clarify that point.

Zillow stands by 42,000 figure

Katie Curnette of Zillow.com, said that she believes the 42,000 figure in Levy’s story was accurate for the 10-county are she tracked: Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, Elbert, Gilpin, Clear Creek and Park. The data includes homes listed by agents, owners, foreclosures and new construction. There may be some double-counting and overlap in the numbers. For example, if a home in foreclosure or a new home that is listed by a Realtor, may be included in both categories. Also, some homes may not be removed immediately from Zillow.com after they have been sold, although Zillow.com encourages Realtors and home sellers to change its status to ”closed” as soon as a home sells. And once public records reflect the sale, Zillow.com will change its status. Local economist Patty Silverstein examined the Zillow.com data and found only 31,740 homes of all kind listed for sale in the 10-county area, about a third lower than what Forbes.com reported. And Silverstein is skeptical that the number of listings are exaggerated, and don’t accurately describe the actual unsold inventory.

“While I know that Zillow.com is frequently used, I question its reliability as a statistically sound time series,”  Silverstein said. ‘Do we have more homes listed today on Zillow.com than a year ago because of increasing popularity of use as opposed to an actual change in inventory? What is their procedure for removing homes from their “for sale” list? Do we truly know that every property listed as for sale is still for sale, or is it possible that it sold but was not removed?” Curnette, of Zillow.com, answers those questions by saying:  “What this really shows is a snapshot of what is listed on Zillow.com at any given moment in time.”

YOY change not apples-to-apples comparison

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the 27 percent increase in listings reported by Forbes.com, at a time when Metrolist is reporting a drop in listings. “The number of homes on the market is important, but what is probably more crucial is that percentage change,” Silverstein said. The latest MLS data shows a total of 20,574 homes for sale in the Denver market, virtually unchanged from March 2009.

“I wouldn’t put much stock in the year-over-year change,”  Curnette said. ”What that represents is that we are getting more partners (usually brokerage firms) that are reporting more homes for sales, than an actual change in the market.”

When InsideRealEstateNews.com told Hickenlopooper that the Zillow.com year-over-year database had expanded, and wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, he thought that should have been a red flag to Forbes.com.”That’s absurd,” Hickenlooper said. “The very fact that the source of their data makes the year-over-year comparison useless, suggest that Forbes should not even have considered writing a story based on that. What kind of a reporter wants to make a story out of useless data? It’s one thing if they are reporting factual data. Forbes is generally considered a very reputable organization. But reckless reporting can haver some very serious consequences for the housing market and overall economy. I think what is odd about it, is that it does not seem to fit into any context. All of the other data we are seeing pretty much indicates that we are going in  the right direction, and suddenly this one comes out of left field and says we have one of the two worst housing markets in the country.”

Niederman: MLS better data than Zillow‘s

Peter Niederman, an owner of the Kentwood Cos., agrees. Niederman also thinks that the Metrolist data, which uses the same methodology month-over-month and year-over-year, provides a true picture of the real estate market. Overall, it shows slightly more than a 5-month supply of unsold homes, which is generally considered a stable, healthy market, he said. He described the Forbes.com article as “very poor reporting and sensationalizing a story when it’s not there.”

“The main difference, the accuracy of information,” Niederman said. “I know we have received calls on properties buyers saw on Zillow or Trulia (another service similar to Zillow) , when we check the MLS, they have been long sold, or they are off the market. Realtor and other MLS members subscribe to the accuracy of information as part of the participant agreement. There is no governing body to main the accuracy of the information (on Zillow or Trulia.) Zillow and Trulia are wonderful ways to market homes, but they really aren’t very good as far as databases on what is actually happening in a market.” He also said it’s crazy to lump market-rate homes, foreclosures and new homes together. They’re throwing in the kitchen sink to report all the inventory when it’s never been reported that way before,” Niederman said. “If we went back and aggregated the same information as compared to today, the total inventory may be far less than it is today"Jack O’Connor, a co-owner of RE/MAX Alliance, said today he has fielded more than a dozen concerns from agents who have clients that are concerned about the Forbes article.”I haven’t heard of anyone not buying a home because of the article, but it certainly is troubling,”  O’Connor said. “I have no idea where they came up with the 42,000 number. Their article is not only misleading, it’s flat wrong. All of our inventory figures say it’s lower than it was 12 months ago, when Forbes listed Denver as the 2nd best place to buy a home. How it has gone from the second best to the worst, at a time when the market has clearly gotten better, does not bode well for their credibility.”

Fear that market will suffer

O’Connor also said that he worries that Denver, which a few years ago was considered a “declining market,” by government agencies such as Fannie Mae, could cause mortgage rates to rise, and make loans harder to get in the Denver area. “You worry that an article like this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The perception created by Forbes can become the reality,”   O’Connor said. In 2008, large lenders such as Wells Fargo, decided that Denver no longer was declining, and could offer its best rates to well-qualified home buyers.

Curnette of Zillow.com said that there are signs of “double dip” in Denver, with home values rising a bit in 2009, before falling again this year. ”Of course, that is tempered by Denver’s relatively flat trajectory,” Curnette said. “Denver’s median home value peaked in May 2006, and since then, home values have fallen 10.8 percent. Compare that with the U.S. as a whole: Home values peaked in June 2006, and have since fallen 23.8 percent. The Denver metro area is an interesting one: It seemed to have been less affected by the run-up in values, and the subsequent downturn, than many other areas of the country. But it does seem to be affected by the larger recession…I would not say that Denver is the worst, or one of the worst, housing markets in the country.”

County	Agent	Owner	Foreclosures	New construction	Total
Adams	3564	14	497	297	4372
Arapahoe	5200	21	744	462	6427
Broomfield	554	3	36	90	683
Denver	6965	57	642	163	7827
Douglas	4333	21	326	609	5289
Jefferson	4807	31	433	180	5451
Elbert	394	2	23	28	447
Gilpin	135	0	10	0	145
Clear Creek	228	0	13	0	241
Park	810	3	45	0	858
Total	26990	152	2769	1829	31740
Sources: Zillow.com, Patty Silverstein

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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Permits issued for single-family homes, condos and townhomes and apartment units fell by almost 64 percent from the 9,429 issued in 2008, which was the second lowest year for building activity since at least 1980 in the Denver area, according to data from the Home Builder Association of Metro Denver, obtained by InsideRealEstateNews.com.

“The big picture is that this is sort of a necessary evil,” said economist Patty Silverstein, principal of Littleton-based Development Research Partners. “As painful as this is for builders and developers, we have to see a stop in the increase of the supply, in order to see improvements in the market. While I think that this year will continue to  be slow, I think we can see some improvements next year.”

In addition to a lack of demand, banks also have been unwilling or unable to lend, which also has crimped the ability of many small builders, she said.

Whatever the reason for the downturn, one thing is clear – the  collapse in Denver-area construction activity last year was unprecedented.

“Historically, if we look over the last 30 years, we have issued an average of 17,000 permits per year,” Silverstein said. The market peaked in 2000, with 28,310 permits issued.  And to put last year’s activity into perspective, consider that it was a 78 percent drop from the 15,890 permits issued in 1980. Since then, the population of the area has grown by about 70 percent. Overall permit activity in the Denver area has dropped from the previous year every year since 2005. Permit activity is down 88 percent from its 28,310 peak in 2001 and is down 77 percent from 2007, when 14,729 permits were issued.

The biggest hit last year was to the apartment market. Permits were issued for only 438 apartment units last year, a 90 percent drop from the 4,413 in 2008. Jeff Hawks, co-owner of the Denver office of Apartment Realty Advisors, said that rental rates in the Denver area need to rise by 20 percent to 30 percent to justify new construction. Because inflation of rents does not appear to be in cards anytime soon, especially given the poor state of the economy, there is no need to build more market-rate apartment communities in the metro area for four or five years, he argues.

What little appreciation people have seen in their homes recently, in large part is because builders are not increasing the supply, noted Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

On one hand, that is good for individual home owners, “although sometimes we view affordable housing as an economic advantage,” for attracting companies to the area and encouraging companies to stay, he noted. Hawks noted that unlike the mid and late 1980s, when Denver was mired in a recession because of the collapse of oil prices and an economy that was not diversified, “now there is no place to go.” Indeed,  people continue to move to Colorado with the hope that our economy will recover faster than other parts of the country, Clark said.

Still, the construction industry coming to a standstill hits the overall economy hard, Clark said.

“Construction is sometimes a leading indicator and sometimes a lagging indicator, depending on what kind of recovery you are having,” Clark said. “But when you look at the unemployment rate in construction approaching the levels we have not seen (since the Great Depression) of the 1930s, it has a huge impact. A large percentage of the people in the construction industry get paid well and they turn over their money very quickly in the marketplace. It has a huge multiplier associated with it, because the housing market touches so many other parts of our economy.”

In years past, Denver has used huge construction projects to pull itself out of its economic doldrums.

“Historically, we built ourselves out of a crisis. We built DIA, and the Colorado Convention Center,” as well as Coors Field and Invesco Field,” Clark noted. “Unfortunately, when the financial institutions are in meltdown and people have lost 30 percent of their net worth, it is hard to get excited to fund these massive projects.”

One bright spot is the redevelopment of Union Station as part of FasTracks, thanks to the federal government planning to provide a $300 million loan. “The federal government did its part in that instance,” Clark said. “But what we really need from Washington is to point which direction we are going. The federal government has never been very good at execution, but it is usually very good at finger pointing. There is no finger pointing, at least not in the direction they expect us to head. If they did that on health care, for example, companies could pull out their calculators and look at their expected profits and losses. But there is no fingers pointing us in a direction that will get us out of this mess. I blame both Republicans and Democrats. I think Congress should be ashamed of itself.  There is no reaching across the aisle to accomplish what needs to be done.”

As grim as it is, it is far worse in other parts of the country, Clark noted.

“At least we’re not Phoenix, or other markets, where a great number of people have experienced huge losses in their home values,” Clark said.

What ultimately will get the construction industry back on its feet is jobs, especially well-paying ones, he said.

“Construction always follows jobs,” Clark said.

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The report said the overall drop was “due largely to a cutback in multi-family construction,” although it did not break out the drop in apartment and housing construction. There were 30,334 total permits issued last year in the six Rocky Mountain region states. In the Denver metro area, building permit activity peaked at 28,310. “Now that is a comparison for you,” said economist Patty Silverstein, principal of Littleton-based Development Research Partners.

Silverstein noted that there were 3,408 building permits issued in the Denver metro area last year, the lowest on record. (For a separate report on the Denver metro area’s construction activity, please go to this link.)

“The regional numbers track pretty well with the Denver-area numbers,” Silverstein said.

Jeff Hawks, principal of Apartment Realty Advisors in Denver, said that apartment construction in the Denver area “has come to a screeching halt. There really was no new construction at all.” From about 2005 to 2007, apartment communities in Denver and almost every other major city in the US. were selling for cap rate of 4.5 percent, while cap rates have now risen to 6.5 percent. The cap (short for capitalization) rate is the net operating income divided by the sales price or value of a property expressed as a percentage. The lower the cap rate, the higher the sales price.

“I believe that every apartment building that was sold during the past couple of years at these low cap rates is not worth its debt,” Hawks said. “Because of that, the developers and lenders have pulled in their horns. They have to handle these legacy issues and they are not building anything new. To build anything new today in Denver, you would have to convince your construction lender and your equity partners that you could basically get 20 percent or 30 percent more in rents than you are getting today.”

Raising rents is tough at a time when a lot of new high-paying jobs aren’t available, he said. The HUD report noted that Colorado’s unemployment rate at the end of last year was 7.5 percent, the highest of the six states in the Rocky Mountain region – that had an overall unemployment rate of 6.8 percent. Colorado’s unemployment rate, however, was lower than the U.S. unemployment rate of 10 percent. The report also noted that the population grew 1.7 percent from the 52-week period ending on July 1 for the six-state region, even though the number of non-farm employment fell by 3.7 percent in Colorado. That compared with a 3.6 percent drop for the region and a 3.0 percent drop for the U.S., according to HUD.

If Colorado would see job growth, and it were possible to raise rents by 5 percent annually, it would still be another four years before new apartment buildings would be built, Hawks said. “And we have 180,000 kids turning 20 in Colorado over the next five years, which is going to mean we are heading for a huge shortage of apartments,” Hawks said. “The last time we saw that kind of increase was from 1969 to 1975 and we built 70,000 units. We’re going to face a real push and pull with supply and demand. We’re going to see a real shortage of apartments.”

Jeff Thredgold, corporate economist for Vectra Bank, said that Colorado’s overall housing market still is in better shape than many other places in the country, such as California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

“Colorado is in a recession, but Colorado did not get hit as hard in the recession, as some of these other states that had these excesses of housing,” Thredgold said. “Colorado did not see the huge increase in housing prices and then the huge deflation of housing values as some of these other states. Colorado did not get as carried away as some of these other states. Even states like Idaho have been hit hard.”

Still, the drop in construction activity hurts the entire economy, he said. “It hurts everybody,” he said.”We have seen a huge decline in home building across the country from its peak. But of course, you don’t want to keep building when you are already over-built. There are some excesses to still be worked off in Colorado, but we’re not nearly as bad as a lot of other states.”

S. Robert August, a Denver-area housing consultant, said the drop in building activity, “is a bad thing. It is bad for Colorado and it is bad for the country.” August blamed the banks. “The biggest issue is that banks are not lending money,” August said. “Until the banks start lending and circulating money, the permits are going to keep going down. Pent-up demand is not being met, based on the fact of the organic direction of life continues to go on.”

He said that big, national builders, such as Denver-based MDC Holdings, parent of Richmond American Homes and KB Home, are continuing to build because they have lines of credits to finance construction. “It’s the smaller to mid-sized buildings that do not have the ability to get loans,” August said.

Source: HUD

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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The Denver-area market didn’t experience the meteoric rise of other markets such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami and Los Angeles, but neither did it suffer the spectacular falls of those markets and others.

Today,  S&P/Case-Shiller  released a report that confirms that.

The index, which tracks 20 major metropolitan statistical areas across the country, released a report that shows from Denver’s peak in August 2006, home prices have fallen by 8.1 percent.  Only Dallas fell less from its peak, about 5 percent from June 2006, according to the report, titled “A Year In Review.”

By contrast, Las Vegas fell 55.4 percent from its peak, Phoenix fell by 49.3 percent,  and Miami was off just less than 50 percent. The peaks vary from Metropolitan Statistical Area to MSA.

“Since 2000, the area traditionally defined as the Sun Belt – Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada- has experienced the largest run-up in prices and, subsequently, has been hit the hardest in the downturn,” according to the report.

By contrast, ”Markets such as Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas and Denver never saw the large double-digit price increases in the 2004-2006 period, but their relative rates of decline have also remained comparatively benign,” according to the analysis by S&P/Case-Shiller. “As of the October 2009 report, Denver’s rate of decline is close to flat, at -0.1%,and Dallas is not far behind, down only 0.6% on an annual basis.” The October report was the most recent one. (Denver was rated No. 1 in the October report. To read more about it, please go to this blog.)

The Detroit market was the only one currently below its 2000 level, down by almost 27 percent

Of course, Denver never saw the dramatic, short-term run-up in prices of  other markets. In 2004, Las Vegas was up by 53.2 percent and Phoenix jumped by 49.3 percent. Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa all saw peak annual growth rates above 30 percent. Denver rose by 40.3 percent from January 2000 to its peak in August 2006.

“i think this certainly tracks with what we have been seeing,” said economist Patty Silverstein, principal of Development Research Partners. “Our home prices have been much more stable through this entire period. Our stability means we are in a better position for this whole recovery in the housing market, than most other markets. We have certainly felt the pain of falling prices, and we have certainly felt the pain of rising foreclosures. But the extent of our decline is nothing in comparison to many other markets in other parts of the country. There is something to be said for having a more stable pattern.”

She also said that with almost a 50 percent from January 2000 to Denver’s peak, and then a drop of less than 10 percent from the peak to October, means, “We still have had a net gain position for the whole decade. Considering that we lost about 40,000 jobs and we have seen many other economic indicators that are very flat to negative,  we still managed to see some housing appreciation. I think that is  pretty good. I think we are really in a better position than almost every other market.”

(For another take on the Denver market, please visit this blog.)

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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Denver performed best in the rankings in the third-quarter report, titled Waiting for the Next McMansion to Drop, in the categories  measuring the price change for the median price of a home at the end of September and the number of delinquencies and foreclosures.  The S&P/Case-Shiller report released on Tuesday, also brought good news to the market, ranking Denver as No. 2 in August of the 20 cities it tracks.

“I sound like a broken-record talking to you about this, but I think that this definitely confirms that our expectation that the Denver housing market is improving a little than other parts of the country,” said Patty Silverstein, principal of the Development Research Partners and chief economist for the Metro Denver Economic  Development Corp.

The overall median price of homes in the Denver area fell by 1.4 percent, according to the report,  with only Boston, which showed  a 2.9 percent increase, and Nashville, with a 0.8 percent decline, doing better. Las Vegas performed the worst, with home prices  falling by 31.3 percent.

As far as delinquencies and foreclosures, 8.1 percent of the first-lien mortgages were 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure. The national average was 12.39 percent. Only Seattle and Portland, at 8.1 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively, fared better than Denver.  The Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market was the worst, at 26.65 percent.  Las Vegas was not far behind at 22.57 percent.

“On foreclosures and delinquencies, that they have improved so much, is good news,” Silverstein said. “But we are still a little concerned that another wave of foreclosure activity is coming from people who have not been able to secure new jobs just yet.

Denver also ranked quite well as far as the monthly supply, which measures the number of months needed to sell the current supply of unsold homes during the next 12 months.

Denver ranked No. 6 out of the 28 cities, with a 6.1 month supply of unsold homes. The drop in supply is encouraging, and will help drive up prices, Silverstein said.

“And when you consider that builders continue to build practically nothing, we expect that we will continue to whittle way at our housing supply, which will only help prices,” she added.

Sacramento was No. 1 with only a 1.9 month supply of homes, while Chicago was in last place with a 19.9-month supply.

Denver was in the bottom half in the other two categories – changes in the housing inventory and jobless rate.

Denver ranked No. 16 in the housing inventory category, showing a 15.5 percent drop from a year earlier of single-family homes, condos and townhomes. In Sacramento, the housing inventory plunged by 59.1 percent, the biggest drop of the 28 markets. New York showed the smallest decrease, wtih the inventory being reduced by only 2.5 percent.

Denver performed worst for the jobless rate, projected at 9.2 percent, for the end of the third-quarter. That gave it a ranking of  18th on the list.

It was also the most puzzling result.

“That doesn’t quite jive,” Silverstein told me. “If you look at August, it was 8 percent for just the City and County of Denver. It always ranks as one of the highest in the metro area. If you look at the metro area as a whole, it averages nearly a percentage point below Denver.”

The WSJ report ranked Washington, D.C. as having the lowest jobless rate at 6.7 percent, and Detroit having the highest at 15.7 percent.Overall, the report provides yet another bullish sign for the housing market, Silverstein said.

“The party line is that we are not out of the woods completely yet, but a lot of our indicators in the residential market seem to suggest that we are seeing a firming up activity, and, hopefully soon we will see a much better and more positive range of prices and some modest appreciation.”

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

T

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Realtors, analysts and politicians dreaded RealtyTrac’s rankings of foreclosure rates, because Greeley, Denver and other places were sure to be at the top of the list.

“I remember you and I used to talk back in those days, and it was always more bad news,” said Patty Silverstein, chief economist for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. and principal of Development Research Partners In Littleton.

No more.

Colorado’s foreclosure black eye is healing. Places like Las Vegas, where about one out of every household is hit by a foreclosure, now are being hammered by mortgage defaults worse than what Denver experienced at its worst.

RealtyTrac, based in Irvine, Calif., released a third-quarter report today that ranks the Denver-Aurora area No. 47 out of 203 metropolitan areas for foreclosure rates. Greeley was the worst in Colorado at No. 33.  Other Colorado metro areas: Fort Collins-Loveland, No. 47; Colorado Springs, 56; and Boulder, 98.

The Denver-Aurora area showed one out of every household with some type of foreclosure filing, not far off from the national average of one out of every 136 households.

“If Denver is No. 47, and near the national average, the top ones must be in really bad shape,” noted economist Silverstein.

Now, other parts of the country have caught up – and in many cases, surpassed – what Colorado was experiencing in 2006.

Las Vegas-Paradise, ranked No. 1, saw the number of foreclosures jump by 53.62 percent in the third quarter from the same period in 2008, more than twice the national average of 22.5 percent. The Denver-Aurora area, by contrast, showed a 1.58 percent drop in the period.

“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,”
said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

“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.”

Silverstein also is worried of another wave of foreclosures, but other areas of the country are even more vulnerable and fragile.

“We certainly felt the pain earlier on,” Silverstein said. “And we are certainly feeling like it is time to start seeing some improvements in Denver and all of those nasty numbers coming our way. It is nice to be in a more solid position.”

She said that she is talking to more and more people every day, who want to take advantage of Denver’s relatively low housing prices, and low interest rates. Unlike other parts of the country, there is a feeling in Denver that the worst may be behind us, she noted.

“This is a terrific opportunity to buy,” Silverstein said, although she is worried about another round of foreclosures due to people losing their jobs.

News such as the RealtyTrac report makes Denver more attractive for businesses than other parts of the country, she said.

“That is going to help us from an economic development perspective,” Silverstein said. “Companies looking to expand or relocate, are very concerned about housing prices and the housing market.”

Also, now that Denver is not fighting the foreclosure battle by itself, the area can benefit from federal programs spurred by rising foreclosure rates in places such as California, Florida, and Nevada.

“Obviously, there is a lot of pain in various parts of the country,” Silverstein said. “Certainly, we hate to see that happen. We all benefit from a healthy economy around the country. But that it the way the teeter-totter of the economy works.”

Rank	Market	Properties with foreclosure filings	%Housing Units with filings	1 out of every household with filing	% change from 2nd quarter 2009	% change from 3rd quarter 2009
N/A	U.S.	937,840	0.73	136	5.40	22.50
33	Greeley	1,234	1.33	75	9.01	23.52
47	Denver-Aurora	9,235	0.89	113	5.48	-1.58
52	Fort Collins-Loveland	1,027	0.81	124	64.58	63.28
56	Colorado Springs	1,926	0.75	133	1.21	15.95
98	Boulder	551	0.45	224	34.39	45.77

.

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“I really do not understand where they are coming from on that,” Silverstein told me this afternoon.  “It sounds crazy. I don’t believe it whatsoever. It  almost seems like they are looking at the wrong data. I say that kind of in jest, but I really do not understand where they came up with this.’

Silverstein said that all of the evidence she has seen indicates that the Denver-area real estate market is on the mend, and one of best-poised metropolitan statistical areas in the country. According to Money only Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and Phoenix will lose more ground than Denver before recovering. While that part may be true, is Denver really in worse shape in terms of real estate than Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, and many others? Are prices going to drop twice as much than in San Francisco, as Money predicts.

Silverstein said that while the Denver-area economy has suffered some recent hits, and may continue to have some issues such as increased unemployed, relative to most of the rest of the country, Denver is in good shape. Indeed, she told me she believes that Denver will help lead the nation out of this economic stupor.

And that bodes well for home prices.

“Our expectations that we are seeing from a lot of indicators – sales activity, interest in the markets, falling inventory, little new construction – is that why we are really not expecting this year to be a great year by any stretch of the imagination, we expect to see some firming up by the end of the year,” Silverstein said. “For them to think that we are going to work through some huge downward-price issues until first quarter 2011, really does seem crazy.”

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