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A report by SKLD Title Services Inc., which tracks real estate and related information in most of the major counties in Colorado, shows that there a total of 4,667 foreclosure filings and sales in a dozen counties in February, a 26.3 percent drop from the 6,336 in February 2010. Foreclosure activity last month also dropped 12.6 percent from the 5,342 in January. The report analyzes data from the Notice of Demand and Election – the first filing to a homeowners – to the Certificate of Purchase – which is the auction sale by public trustee offices.
Counties in the report are:
Adams
Arapahoe
Boulder
Broomfield
Denver
Douglas
Elbert
El Paso
Jefferson
Larimer
Pueblo
Weld
Most of the drop can be attributed to the decrease in the Notice of Election filings, noted Linda Vose, vice president of SKLD.
Trend or a lull?
The big question is whether this is a lull in the foreclosure filings because of sloppy paperwork by banks that have been widely criticized, or the start of a trend.
“Is it primarily because of the robo-signing of documents and that whole mess? I don’t know,” Vose said. “But it does look like, overall, foreclosures are moving in the right direction. Overall, I like what we’re seeing.”
She said the one major exception to the significant drop in foreclosure activity in most counties last month is Denver. She said the increase in Denver, however, may be due to the public trustee’s office dealing with foreclosures that are coming in, causing a backlog of previously filed foreclosures that have not been processed by the office yet. Total foreclosure activity in Denver was up 18 percent in February from January.
The Colorado Division of Housing on Wednesday is scheduled to release its own foreclosure report, which will show the same trend.
The housing division’s report will show that February foreclosure filings in Colorado’s urban counties have fallen to a 30-month low, said Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the division. Lenders and servicers are proceeding with more caution because of all of the national problems, he is told by local experts, although he said the magnitude of the drop is still surprising. Foreclosure auctions also are down, “so every measure I use shows a decline in foreclosure activity,” according to McMaken.
About SKLD
SKLD was formed in 1961 by four title insurance companies: Security Title Guaranty Co. Kansas City Title Insurance Co., Lawyers Title Insurance Corp., and the Denver Abstract Co. to maintain metro-Denver property records in a joint title plant. (The name SKLD came from the first letters of the company names.) Because of the exacting needs of the title insurance industry, SKLD developed extensive internal data capture and validation processes to insure depth, accuracy and integrity unavailable anywhere else. In the early 1990s, SKLD made their timely, high quality data available to companies outside the title insurance industry in the form of mailing lists, transaction reports, and document images.
SKLD’s information is obtained from public records maintained by county Clerks and Recorders. Today, SKLD houses 38.5 million records and over 26 million document images in Colorado’s most comprehensive property records database. 5,000 to 10,000 new records are added daily to the SKLD system.
