First Quarter Decline in Colorado House Repos
Filings for house repos in Colorado decline 7.6 percent in the first three months of this year. And the number of houses that went into completed foreclosures also fell 26.2 percent. Completed foreclosures are properties whose owners went into foreclosure and failed to pay their arrears or negotiate with their lenders for a loan workout to make their accounts current.
According to the Colorado Housing Division, foreclosure filing declines were reported in the counties of Arapahoe, Broomfield, Douglas, Adams, Denver, Weld and Jefferson. Only the counties of El Paso, Mesa, Larimer and Pueblo saw increases in foreclosure filings in the first quarter.
In Mesa, foreclosure filings went up by 47.1 percent, while Pueblo and Larimer each reported a 10 percent rise. On the other hand, Boulder County saw a 4.7 percent rise in foreclosure filings.
The figures could bring a sigh of relief to officials and residents of Colorado which RealtyTrac, a foreclosure monitoring firm, identified to have the fifth highest foreclosure rate in the United States in 2008. Colorado ended the year of 2008 with 66,795 house repos filings. And last year’s state foreclosure rate was 27.90 percentage higher than the previous year.
Meanwhile, not all is well in El Paso County as it reported the worsening of foreclosure activity in the area in the first quarter.
According to the Housing Division, El Paso’s foreclosure filings reached 1,292 in the first quarter, representing a 6.3 percent rise compared with figures for the same period in 2008.
Furthermore, completed foreclosures in El Paso jumped 2.6 percent. According to Kathi Williams, director of the Housing Division, the rise in El Paso foreclosure listings may be a result of the increasing unemployment rate and oversupply of properties for sale.
The abundance of properties on the market increases competition and distressed homeowners are finding it hard to find investors or buyers for their distressed properties.
However, the Housing Division noted that the foreclosure rate of El Paso is not as bad as that of Mesa which saw an 83.3 percent rise in house repos in the first quarter. For the first quarter, El Paso had one foreclosed property for every 418.2 homeowners.
On the other hand, Rick Simon of the Bank of America Home Loans said that banks are continuing to look for ways to help homeowners prevent foreclosures. However, the longer a distressed homeowner responds to the house repos problem, the harder it is to stop foreclosure.
