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During November 2016, there were 147 foreclosure sales in Colorado's metro areas, which means foreclosure sales totals are near the lowest levels ever recorded since the report was first initiated in 2007. Foreclosure activity in general throughout 2016 has shown numerous declines throughout the year as home prices increase, job losses remain muted, and demand for real estate remains strong. Foreclosure sales are the final stage of the foreclosure process when foreclosing properties are sold to a third party or become bank-owned. In November, foreclosure sales were down 29 percent compared to November 2015 in the metro areas, falling from 207 during November 2015 to 147 during November 2016. For the first eleven months of this year combined, there was a total of 2,138 foreclosure sales in Colorado's metro areas, which was down 26.3 percent compared to the same period of 2015, when there were 2,899 foreclosure sales. Foreclosure filings, which are the first step in the...

During September 2016 in Colorado's metro Counties, there were 438 new foreclosure filings. That's the lowest total ever recorded since I began tracking monthly totals in 2007. September 2016's total was down 13.2 percent from September 2015 when new foreclosure filings totaled 505. "Filings" refers to "notices of election and demand" which are the first step in the foreclosure process. Filings had peaked at 4,030  in December 2007, but September 2016's total was down 89 percent from that peak.  Foreclosure "sales," which are the point in the foreclosure process where foreclosing properties are sold off at auction, are also down considerable from the 2008 peak. during September 2016, there were 158 foreclosure sales in the metro counties. That's down 38 percent from September 2015, and it's down 94 percent from the peak of 2,706 in January 2008.  Due to high price inflation for homes — and the related phenomena of high d...

Most of the employment data used in economic trends analysis depends on survey data using samples. This data can be useful, but it's always helpful to have other sources to provide context to the data. One way to analyze trends on an annual basis is to use tax return data. Tax return data, of course, is especially reliable because misrepresenting income on tax returns can bring stiff fines and even jail time.  Specifically, there are at least two helpful data points here. One is the number of filers for each year. This tells us how many people (or joint filers) had enough income to necessitate filings a return. When the number of people with jobs declines, the number of filers will decline. What the job market is adding many new workers, the number of filers will tend to increase.  Looking at the total number of filers putting in income tax returns, we see the following trend:  Not surprisingly, as job growth surged at the end of the last economic boom, ...

The FBI released new homicide data yesterday showing the US nationwide homicide rate increased to 4.9 per 100,000. That's up from 2014's rate of 4.4 per 100,000. Nevertheless, the US homicide rate remains near a 50 year low , and 2015's rate is comparable to homicide rates found during the late 1950s when the US was in the midst of a historical lull in homicide rates. In Colorado, we find a similar situation. 2010's homicide rate was the lowest recorded since 1960, with 2015's rate up from that. However, the overall trend has generally been flat over the past ten years: In 2015, the Colorado homicide rate increased to 3.2 per 100,000, up from 2014's rate of 2.8 percent. However, 2015's homicide rate is what in no way unusual compared to the last decade of data. These totals are among some of the lowest we've seen in decades. We see little to suggest that the legalization of recreational cannabis use has led to any sizable increase in homicide...

According to the most recent employment data from the Department of Labor and Employment, there were  approximately 101,00 payroll jobs in Greeley during July 2016. That's up from the 98,000 jobs estimated during July of last year. However, total payroll employment in the region has gone only sideways since 2014. In October of 2014, there were 102,000 jobs in the Greeley area, but since then, payroll employment has never exceeded 102,000 positions. In other words, employment growth has been flat for the past two years: Compare this trend to the one in Fort Collins, right next door. In the case of Fort Collins, the overall job trend mirrors that of the state overall with an unbroken upward slope since 2009:  Since 2014, unlike Greeley, Fort Collins has only continued upward on the same trend as before. Oil prices, not surprisingly, appear to be a big factor in this trend in Greeley. Last December, for example, The Tribune reported that " Colorado's oil rig...

August is now behind us, and as a sign of the concern central bankers share over the weakness found in the world's major economies, there is no sign of any effort to rise target rates at central banks.  From the Fed to the European Central Bank, to the Bank of England and beyond, there appears to be no appetite for attempting to return to more "normal" monetary policy. We're apparently in a state of virtual permanency when it comes to "extraordinary" monetary policy which involves keeping the target interest rate at zero or near zero for years on end.  In fact, the only movement we've seen at a major central bank in recent days comes from the Bank of England where the bank cut the target rate from 0.5 percent to 0.25 percent. Except for that change, and continued declines in Australia, nothing has moved since last Spring:  In late July, the Fed declined to raise the Federal Funds rate. But, of course, they maintained the usual posture of sayi...

During the second quarter of 2016, rent growt hin Colorado springs hit an all-time high of 10.2 percent, bringing the average rent in the metro area to 991 dollars, which is also an all-time high. That's up from the first quarter  of this year when the average rent was 959. The average rent during the second quarter of last year was 899 dollars. According to data released by the Colorado Division of Housing , the average rent in Colorado Springs continues to grow at a historically high rates: The last time the average rent grew at a similar rate was during the dot-com boom at the very end of the 1990s. If we look at the average rent over, time, we find that the general trend has, not surprisingly been upward, but has increased more rapidly over the past five years than was the case during the previous decade: Looking just at nominal rent levels, however, can be misleading, and if we adjust for inflation using the nationwide CPI, we find that rents actually went down in r...

According to federal bankruptcy court records , there were 1,106 bankruptcy filings in Colorado during August. That's up 11 percent from July's total of 990, and it's down 8.5 percent from August 2015's total of 1,208. Overall, the general trend has been downward since 2010, as we can see in the first graph: An unusual thing happened in August, though: bankruptcy filings increased from July to August. Since 2007, this only happened once before, during 2011.  In other words, bankruptcies usually fall during this period, but from July to August of this year, bankruptcies rose at the highest rate experience since 2006: It remains to be seen whether or not this signals a change in the downward trend we've seen seeing for the past six years. There have been other indicators, though, that this year bankruptcy activity has been leveling off, rather than continuing the sharp down ward trend that we saw from about 2012 to 2015. The next graph shows how year-ove...

Through July of this year, the Pueblo area reported 156 permits for private housing units. That's an increase of 13.3 percent compared to 2015, although overall permitting activity is up from the low points experienced in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession. (All permit data used in this article is form the Census Bureau.) The first graph shows total permit activity for each year for the period of January-July: While permits are down this year compared to last, they are nonetheless up compared to every year in the period from 2011-2014. Over the past decade, only three years showed increases over the previous year. The second graph shows year-to-year change in permits for the period from January-July (values are in %): Most of the past decade has reflected an experience of declining permit activity from the housing-bubble highs prior to 2008. A significant decline began in 2007 and the area really didn't begin to show signs of life again until 2015. The vast majo...

For now, there are few dark clouds on the horizon for payroll employment totals in Colorado. While employment growth has softened somewhat since 2014, it remains well above zero. According to state-level employment data, released on August 22 , year-over-year employment growth in Colorado increased 3 percent, which was the largest increase since July of last year when growth reached 3.2 percent. There were a total of 2.62 million jobs in Colorado in July, compared to 2.55 million jobs one year earlier. That equates to 76,000 more jobs, year-over-year. This should not be equated for new employed persons, however, as this measure of employment counts only jobs and not people. Thus, a single person with two jobs would show up as two jobs by this measure, and two job holders should not be assumed. The Household Survey, which counts employed persons, will be considered in a separate post. Nevertheless, job growth, strictly speaking, continues in positive territory. On a month-...

To the surprise of very few, the Denver Post reported last month that the average rent in metro Denver continues to rise. According to the Metro Denver Apartment Vacancy and Rent Survey,  the average rent during the second quarter of 2016 was $1,371, which was up from teh first quarter's average rent of 1,315. The second quarter rent marks a new all-time high: The increases in rental rates reflects ongoing low vacancy rates in the region. For the second quarter, the apartment vacancy rate in Metro Denver was 5.4 percent, which was down from the first quarter rate of 6.1 percent. During the second quarter 2015, the vacancy rate was 4.5 percent. Overall, we can see that, excluding a surge in vacancies during the fourth quarter of last year, the vacancy rate in metro Denver remains low, although not as low as what we frequently saw during the 1990s: As the economy has slowly expanded in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession, apartment vacancies have tightened, and reached esp...

Americans have long regarded owning a home to be largely synonymous with the so-called "American dream." High homeownership rates are not necessarily synonymous with a high-income prosperous society. Switzerland and Germany, for example , have homeownership rates well below that usually found in the US. Nevertheless, the US government has long made increasing homeownership an important policy goal, and this has led to a number of large and costly programs and institutions including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHA, and a plethora of federal regulations surrounding mortgage lending and banking. Things haven't quite gone as planned. The most recent quarterly data from the Us Census Bureau shows that the homeownership rate in the United States has fallen to a 51-year low.  as of the second quarter of 2016. As of the second quarter of 2016, the homeownership rate in the United States was, according to the Bureau, 62.9 percent. That's exactly equal to the rate reco...

This week marks the 140th anniversary of Colorado statehood. That means the constitution of Colorado took effect 140 years ago this week, on August 1, 1876. The state constitution has been amended many times since it was first adopted, but a look at the original constitution provides some interesting insights into the historical and political context of the time during which Colorado became a state. Here are a few of them: 1. The government of Colorado was tri-lingual at first. The constitution states: The General Assembly shall provide for the publication of the laws passed at each session thereof; and, until the year 1900 they shall be caused to publish in Spanish and German, a sufficient number of copies of said laws to supply that portion of the inhabitants of the State who speak those languages, and who may be unable to read and to understand the English language.  This provision is likely due to the influence of Casimiro Barela , a Mexican-born Coloradan from Tr...

Last week, the Fed's Federal Open Market Committee announced it would leave the target Federal Funds Rate unchanged. During 2014 and 2015, the Fed repeatedly hinted that it would raise rates "soon" and that it would return the target rate to more normal levels. Throughout most of 2015, the Fed repeatedly put off increasing the target rate, and then, feeling pressured to actually take action after many months of claiming it would take action, the Fed raised the target rate from 0.25% to 0.5% in December of 2015. Since then, though, after months of claiming that the economy was improving, the Fed has refused to raise the target rate any further. The Fed was apparently spooked by what many would consider to be a fragile economy, although FOMC statements continue to contain phrases like "growing," "moderate" "gains" and other language that would lead one to believe that the economy is stable and strong. The reality, of course, is somethi...

The Victorians were known for taking photos of recently deceased relatives. Especially children. For a view of many of these, simply google "victorian photos of deceased children." The practice did not totally die out with the Victorians, though. It persisted into the mid-twentieth century, especially among non-Anglo-Saxon and Catholic households with ties to cultures outside the US. For example, my mother recently passed along to me a photo of her deceased brother Antonio who had died in the early 1940s in Los Angeles. In this case, the photo is quite "tame" by historical standards in that the deceased person is not propped up to look alive, as was the case in many Victorian photos. This is simply a photo of the child in his casket. Note the "Baby Galindo" on the blue ribbon at the center: In the 1940s, the infant mortality rate was higher for Mexican-American families than it was for non-Hispanic whites, although families of all ethnicities comm...

In this analysis from RedPin.com, the analysts conclude that while the "American dream" is no longer possible in many coastal cities, it's still possible in Denver and Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs is considerably more affordable than Denver in this analysis. I'll let you have a look on your own. The least affordable places, by far, are New York City and San Francisco:

There's been a lot of talk on homicide in the United States recently, so I thought I'd add in a little factual information about the picture in Colorado. As I've noted on several topics before , it rarely makes sense to speak of a nationwide statistic when discussing the United States. That may make sense for Finland where nearly the entire population of five million lives within one or two metro areas, but it makes no sense for a country as large and diverse as the United States. Colorado is the size of several smaller European countries (including Norway and Finland) and it makes more sense to look at the US as a collection of political entities, rather than one. After all, no one lives "in the United States." People don't even live "in Colorado." People tend to live, work, and play within a single metropolitan area, most of the time. In a future article, I may take a look at homicide rates separated out by metro areas in Colorado. But, for n...

There is no doubt that there is a boom going on out there. Unfortunately, for much of the country, it's largely just a boom in asset prices, and not in job growth. That means real incomes are going down for people who don't make a sizable amount of income off assets they own. In other words, for most people, the cost of living is going up while the job situation is stagnating. Colorado has tended to do better than many areas of the country in recent years, and the national data tends to reflect a more negative reality. Yesterday, the Fed admitted as much when the FOMC voted to take no action on the target federal funds rate announcing "Against this backdrop [of poor economic data], the Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 1/4 to 1/2 percent." (See the official statement, here .) The move signals a surrender on the Fed's part in regards to earlier claims that it would gradually raise interest rates throughout 2016 back ...