DENVER Fewer Colorado homeowners are going through foreclosure, according to numbers the state government released Tuesday.
Archuleta County has one of the states highest foreclosure rates, but the county is seeing improvement along with most of the rest of the state.
The Colorado Division of Housing reports foreclosure numbers four times a year, and its latest report has good news for a housing market thats been in trouble for at least five years.
Colorado in 2011 is on pace to have less than 35,000 foreclosure filings for the first time since 2006, according to the report.
Foreclosure filings dropped significantly in 2010 in the aftermath of the robo-signing controversy about banks not properly reviewing their paperwork.
The surprising thing is that the numbers didnt bounce back this year, said Ryan McMaken, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, in a news release. Were now likely to end this year with far fewer foreclosure filings than occurred last year, but there still may be a sizable inventory in pending foreclosures that have yet to be processed.
Archuleta County led the state in the rate of foreclosure filings between July and September, with banks foreclosing on one in every 136 of the countys households.
Technically, San Juan County tied Archuleta County for the states highest rate. But the tiny county had only two foreclosures, and the rate looks high because of the small population.
But even in Archuleta County, the news is getting better. The county has seen 119 foreclosure filings the first nine months of 2011, down from 168 over the same period last year. The drop slightly exceeds the states average drop of 27.1 percent in foreclosure filings this year compared to 2010.
Mountain counties now dominate the top 10 list in foreclosure rates.
The demand for home buying dropped off much later in the mountains than along the Front Range, and it looks like theyre still adjusting to the shift in those markets, McMaken said.
La Plata and Montezuma counties remained well below the state average, with banks foreclosing on 1 in more than 600 homeowners in each county. Both counties also saw drops in foreclosure numbers compared to 2010.
The Division of Housing report warns that the positive trend is not guaranteed to continue.
The speed with which foreclosures are processed could increase at any time, and sluggish employment growth could potentially lead to a surge in delinquencies following the holiday season, the report says.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.
