Foreclosure filings in Colorado have plummeted 40 percent in the past year, a trend experts partly attribute to the fact that mortgage services and lenders continue to process foreclosures at an unusually slow rate.
In Colorado’s metropolitan counties, foreclosure filings fell from 3,228 during April 2010 to 1,933 in April 2011, according to a report Tuesday from the Colorado Division of Housing.
Foreclosure sales at auction fell 11.2 percent during the same period. There were 1,604 sales at auction in April 2011 in Colorado’s metropolitan counties, compared with 1,806 in April 2010.
Ryan McMaken, Housing Division spokesman, noted that it has been seven months since foreclosure filings increased year over year and in three of those months foreclosure filings showed drops of 30 percent or more.
“This seems to be the new normal in the processing of foreclosures,” McMaken said.
The additional caution of mortgage services and lenders — and resulting slowdown in foreclosures — follows last fall’s “robo-signing” controversy, when Bank of America, GMAC and other mortgage companies were accused of rapidly processing foreclosures without proper documentation.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
