Colorado was one of several states where homes scheduled for foreclosure auction spiked in the third quarter of 2014, with the 2,919 homes set for auction, up 50 percent from 1,941 in the second quarter, and up 48 percent from 1,968 in the third quarter of 2013, said Thursday.
Scheduled foreclosure auctions also spiked year-over-year in North Carolina and Oregon, both up 85 percent; New Jersey, up 66 percent;
Oklahoma, up 58 percent; New York, up 57 percent; and Connecticut up 51 percent.
RealtyTrac could not say how many of the homes were actually sold at auction.
RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist attributed the Colorado surge to “fallout from a lawsuit the state attorney general (John Suthers) filed last year against the state’s two largest foreclosure attorneys for improper billing practices.”
The lawsuit slowed foreclosure activity in the second half of 2013 and the first half of 2014, Blomquist said. “But now some of those delayed foreclosures are coming through the pipeline as the two attorneys in the lawsuits are transferring many of their pending foreclosures to other firms. Those firms are now starting up the foreclosure process on those cases.”
Suthers in July sued Aronowitz & Mecklenburg and The Castle Law Group, a .
, and agreed to pay more than $10 million and close the practice. The Castle Law Group is battling the attorney general’s case, as well as a similar class-action case brought by homeowners.
Foreclosure filings increased 37 percent from the second quarter of 2014 to the third, jumping to 3,581 from 2,611.
Denver County saw a 151 percent increase for the year, with 98 foreclosure filings in September, up from 39
in September 2013.
In Jefferson County, there were 358 foreclosure filings in the third quarter of 2014, up 41 percent from 253 in the second quarter.
Likewise, the metro Denver filings increased 25 percent increase in foreclosure filling from September 2013, when there were 398 filings, to the 496 foreclosure filings in in September 2014.
However, Blomquist said the increased foreclosure activity “is not the result of underlying economic or housing market problems. The bad news is that Colorado’s housing market may have looked better than it actually was over the past 12 months because of these artificially held back foreclosure actions.”
Frank Duran, of Re/Max Alliance, who covers the Denver region, said that the short-sale market has definitely shrunk
“A couple of years ago, out of every 20 clients I was serving, 17 to 18 of those clients were people I was helping through a short sale,” Duran said. “Over the last year, this ratio has flip-flopped. I am now serving two to three clients in a short sale for every 20 clients I serve.”
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939, hpankratz@denverpost.com or twitter.com/howardpankratz
