Tuesday, December 13, 2011

My remarks in Bloomberg

Bloomberg recently published a piece that mentioned Colorado Real Estate:

Plummeting Income Shaves Household Cash
By Frank Bass and Timothy R. Homan - Dec 7, 2011 10:00 PM MT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-08/plummeting-income-from-investments-shaves-u-s-household-cash.html

Prices for existing U.S. homes fell over the decade in one of five U.S. counties, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Pitkin County, Colorado, homeowners were hardest hit. The median value of a home in the central Colorado county, home to the Aspen/Snowmass ski complex, fell $304,800, almost 10 times the decline in Oakland County, Michigan, the second-biggest loser.

The median sales price was $1.2 million for the 63 homes sold during the third quarter of 2010 in the Aspen area, said Ryan McMaken, chief economist for the Colorado Division of Housing. During the third quarter of 2011, 68 homes were sold with a median sales price of $637,000, he said.

“There aren’t a lot of fire sales, but there hasn’t been the sort of demand that existed prior to the financial crisis,” McMaken said. “It’s pretty clear there have been some declines.”

9News, November 16




9News picked up our October foreclosures release.

Fox 31, November 8



Fox 31 picked up our release on 3rd Q foreclosures.

On 9News, September 15



9News picked up the August release on foreclosures.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Interview with Colorado Public Radio

Interview with Colorado Public Radio, August 11, 2011

Reporter: Which means the future’s bright for buyers who are looking to rent out their investment. Competition for single family homes will likely drive rents higher. Ryan McMaken is an economist with the Colorado Division of Housing. He says that competition for rentals could be a lasting effect of the recession.

Ryan McMaken: People who want to rent houses or live in a single family house they can’t afford to buy one right now, they don’t have the down payment they don’t have the credit rating and so on they’re going to rent instead.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

9News invited me in to discuss the second quarter foreclosure stats for Colorado. The story is here.


Fox31 covers the latest report on apartments


Fox31 stopped by to interview me on the latest apartment vacancy and rent report. Here's the story.





Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Government-Benefits Bubble

Originally posted at the Mises Economics Blog

by Ryan McMaken

The New York times recently noted that “Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out.”

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics…

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession.


When this happens, it will be just the latest bubble to pop.

As far back as 2008, Peter Schiff and other Austrian-minded observers contended that with the various stimulus packages, the feds were just blowing up a government benefits bubble to replace the real estate bubble, which had in turn replaced the dot-com bubble.

The government benefits bubble can’t be maintained forever, so once the stimulus runs out, and as unemployment insurance runs out for millions of unemployed workers, that bubble will burst too, and spending, consumer confidence, and demand for purchasing real estate will fall again.

The NYT piece has some interesting statistics on this, and below, I add some more.

Click for more.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

AP: Colorado foreclosures fall 24 percent in May

The AP picked up my foreclosure story today. Carried at 9News:

Colorado foreclosures fall 24 percent in May

DENVER (AP) - Foreclosures in Colorado are continuing to fall.

According to the Colorado Division of Housing, they fell 24 percent in May compared to last year.

The department says May was the sixth consecutive month during which both filings and sales were down when compared to the same month a year earlier.

Division of Housing spokesman Ryan McMaken says lenders and servicers have been proceeding slowing the foreclosure process during the past seven or eight months and there are fewer foreclosures to report.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Series of articles on Colo. Public Radio

I recently was interviewed in person by Ben Markus over at Colorado Public Radio. They've been incorporating pieces of the interview into recent segments.

Here's a piece of an earlier remote interview:

Foreclosure fillings fell last quarter by 27%. Ryan McMaken is the chief economist at the Colorado Division of Housing.

McMaken: It’s quite a drop, even compared to all the other first quarters, so that we can forget about seasonal issues, the numbers are still down considerably from an average first quarter number.

McMacken [sic] says this may signal growing strength in the real estate market. Initially, the slow down in foreclosure fillings came from banks halting so-called robo-signing. Some lenders and got into legal trouble for approving foreclosures without even reading the documents. But McMaken says that’s probably not the cause for the slowdown now.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Late December foreclosure stats update

Here's a December 22nd foreclosure update for 9news.