Foreclosure Sales Hit All-Time Low in September

Foreclosure sales in Colorado's metropolitan counties fell to a total of 95 in September, coming in at the lowest total ever recorded since this survey was begun in 2007. During the same period, there were 415 foreclosure filings.

This continues a multi-year trend of declining foreclosure activity, as we can see in the graph. September's foreclosure sales total was the lowest ever recorded with the next smallest being June's total of 106.

Foreclosure filings, meanwhile, we up slightly from all-time high's but remained near the lowest levels we've seen in the last decade. An all-time low was reached in July of this year when foreclosure filings totals dropped to 394.

These figures are totals for Colorado's 11 most-populous counties, plus Broomfield County. Foreclosure filings are the event that begins the foreclosure process, and foreclosure sales occur at the end of the process when properties are sold at auction, often going to the lender.

In the second graph, we see year-over-year changes in total foreclosure filings and sales. In September 2017, filings were down slightly from September 2016, dropping by 5.25 percent. Foreclosure sales dropped by much more, falling 38.8 percent year over year. As we can see in the graph, both filings and sales have been dropping each month for the past 10 months, and the overall trend for both filings and sales has clearly been downward since 2012.

Many counties differ in their foreclosure trends, and the number of foreclosure compared to the overall number of households can vary considerably.

If we look at foreclosure filings in each county on a per household basis, we find that Pueblo County has the fewest households per foreclosure — only 394 households per foreclosure — while Larimer County has the most — 2,771 households per foreclosure. Note that a larger number means fewer foreclosures in relation to population size. In other words, the larger the number of households per foreclosure, the lower the "foreclosure rate."

Also note that the counties with the lowest foreclosure rate tend to be higher-income counties such as Boulder and Douglas counties. Pueblo, Mesa, and Adams counties, on the other hand — which have higher foreclosure rates — have lower overall income levels.

A similar trend holds when we make the same comparisons using foreclosure sales. Pueblo has the fewest households per foreclosure sale (2,723) while Broomfield County reported no foreclosure sales at all.

Some counties are certainly more foreclosure-free than others. But, even those counties that have some of the highest foreclosure rates, relatively speaking, are still way down in their foreclosure totals from what we were seeing back in 2009 and 2010. Foreclosure activity continues to be at very low levels across all metro areas for now.

(This data is collected from the Public Trustee in each county.)

Home Loan Payoffs Down 2.6 Percent in Third Quarter of 2016

The number of mortgage loans paid off in Colorado was down 2.6 percent during 2016’s third quarter compared to the same period of last year. Mortgage payoff rose 21.6 percent from the second quarter to the third quarter of this year. 

Public trustees in Colorado released a total of 87,192 deeds of trust during the third quarter of 2016, indicating a sizable increase in the amount of home purchase and refinance activity since the first and second quarters of this year. Typically, a release of a deed of trust occurs when a real estate loan is paid off whether through refinance, sale of property or because the owner has made the final payment on the loan. Release activity rises as refinance and home-sale activity increases. 

In the first chart, we see release activity in the third quarter compared to the third quarter of last year: 

In this case, we see that Summit County and La Plata County reported the most release activity over the period, thus suggesting more sale and refi activity in those areas. The largest decreases, on the other hand, were found in Boulder County and Eagle county over the period suggesting less sales and refi activity. Overall, release activity fell in 11 counties while increasing  in 10 counties. 

The second chart shows release activity relative to the overall number of households in each county. A lower number indicates more release activity per household. 

In this case, there were only 7 households per release of deed of trust in Summit County, making it the most active county. The least active county was Pueblo County:

The third chart shows total releases for the first three quarters of this year compared to the same period last year. In this case, the largest increase was found in Alamosa County, and the largest decline was found in Eagle County. In the counties surveyed, activity fell 1.3 percent from 2015 to 2016. 

In this case, it appears some of the most expensive counties — in terms of real estate — have been experiencing some of the largest declines in activity while the largest increases are seen in the lower-cost counties such as Pueblo and Mesa. There are exceptions, however, as in the case of La Plata county, which is a relatively expensive county that is nonetheless seeing continued increases in release activity. 

Being largely driven by refi activity, release activity is sensitive to changes in mortgage rates.  In the next graph, we can see that following periods of decline in mortgage rates, release activity tends to rise. Release activity tends to fall in periods following increases in the mortgage rate: 

For example, note how release activity fell significantly during late 2013 and early 2014 following an uptick in mortgage rates during 2012 and 2013. Similarly, an increase in mortgage rates in 2015 likely contributed to a slight drop-off in release activity in early 2016. In 2016, however, mortgage rates have fallen, which helps explain the uptick in release activity during the third quarter of this year.  

Other factors are important too, however, and these include overall demand for housing, employment, and population growth. In Colorado, even in the face of increases in the mortgage rate, we often continue to see sustained real-estate transaction activity when jobs creation remains solid and population totals are steady or increasing. Overall, 2016 has seen little change from 2015 in terms of statewide release activity.

Barring a significant chance in economic conditions, this situation is likely to continue. 

(Totals for releases of deeds of trust are collected quarterly. This report tracks releases of deeds of trust as reported by public trustees in Colorado. The report includes twenty-one counties which are chosen based on population size and to ensure that as many regions of the state as possible are represented. More than 90 percent of all occupied households in Colorado are within the twenty-one counties chosen.)

Bankruptcy filings up 11 percent from July to August, contrary to the usual trend

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-over-year changes in bankruptcy activity has been rather sizable with year-over-year declines of 20 percent or more being rather common. So far, this year, the degree to which filings have been declining become smaller compared to 2015. From August 2015 to August 2016, bankruptcies fell 8.5 percent. From August 2014 to August 2015, bankruptcies fell 16.9 percent.

Are bankruptcies surging in Colorado? At this time, there's not enough or an established trend to say this, although the most recent data may suggest that the most robust portion of the current expansion may be softening. 

Homicide rate in Colorado near 50-year low

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 now, let's look at the state overall.

The graph shows the homicide rate in Colorado since 1960, as reported by the FBI:

In 2014, the homicide rate was 2.8 per 100,000. That's up from the 50-year low reached in 2010 (when the rate was 2.5). In fact, the homicide rate in 2010 was the lowest recorded in more than 50 years. The FBI data here does not go back before 1960, but based on national data before 1960, its a good bet that homicide rates in Colorado during the 50s — which was a period of very low homicide rates nationwide — were even lower than today in Colorado.

Since the 1972 peak in Colorado, when the homicide rate was 8.1 per 100,000, the homicide rate has fallen 65 percent. Since 1981, when the rate again went up to an unusually high level of 8.0 per 100,000, the rate has fallen by 64 percent.

Most of the public, however, is unaware that homicide rates have been declining in Colorado and nationwide over the past 20 years. The Pew Research Center has noted this in terms of national statistics.  The Colorado trend is a little different from the national trend, and you will notice the national homicide rate tends to be higher than the Colorado rate:

This data shows trends over time. But how does Colorado compare to other states right now?

In this map, we can see that Colorado is generally a low-homicide state, and similar to numerous other states in the northern US and provinces in central Canada:

Here's another graph that shows where Colorado falls:

The red bars are Canadian provinces, and the blue bars are US states. This is all based on the most recent data from the FBI and the Canadian government.

If you're interested in comparisons to Mexican state-by-state data, I completed an earlier analysis on that here.

(The rates were calculated using homicide totals from FBI sources, which I then adjusted to Colorado resident population for each year.)

FHFA's Colorado Home Price Index up 9.5 Percent at end of 2015

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's "Expanded-Data" index, house prices were up 9.5 percent, year over year, during the fourth quarter of 2015 in Colorado. It was the lowest growth rate in four quarters, but still showed robust growth for what continues to be an upward trend in home prices for much of Colorado:

Overall, Colorado has seen growth rates of 8 to 10 percent for the past 13 quarters, although this doesn't quite match the growth experienced toward the end of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The YOY growth rate was 107. percent during the third quarter of 2015, and it was 9.4 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014.

Most of this was driven by growth in the metro Denver area and northern Colorado. Using the same index, we see that growth in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area showed a very similar pattern:

In this case, we see the pattern is the same although the growth rates are slightly stronger in metro Denver than for the state overall. This suggests less robust growth in the state outside the metro Denver area.

During the fourth quarter of 2015, the YOY growth rate was 11.8 percent. The growth rate was 13.2 percent during the third quarter of 2015, and 9.4 percent during the last quarter of 2014.

For now, there is no evidence of any significant softening in the market as of the end of last year. The most recent Case-Shiller home price data, for December 2015, showed little drop off from the 15-year highs that we've seen in that index in recent years.

 In a future post, we can look at FHFA index numbers for the smaller markets. For more information on the FHFA index, see here.

Military spending by state: Colorado ranked 18th

With the arrival of the presidential primaries (and especially the one in South Carolina), i'm reminded that military spending can be a major factor in state level politics. Some states owe very large portions of their state's GDP to military spending, and it's not a coincidence that Southern states are known for their pro-military voting blocs. Many states in that regions have economies intimately tied to their local economies.

To see where Colorado fits in this, we can look at a 2011 study conducted by Bloomberg that examines military spending by state. The key factor we'll look at here is the amount of  military spending in each state, compared to the overall GDP.

When mapped out, it looks like this:

This statistics is not to be confused with total military spending. California, for example, receives much more military spending, overall, than Colorado does, but proportional to their overall economy, military spending in California is smaller in California than it is in Colorado. 

In Colorado, military spending is equal to 4.3 percent of the state's total GDP. We could compare that to a top-ten state like Virginia where military spending is equal to 13.9 percent of the state's economy. In South Carolina, the percentage is 5.7 percent. 

The state least dependent on military spending is Minnesota where the percentage is 1.1 percent. 

As a region, the Rocky Mountain Region outside Arizona is not largely dependent on military spending, with both Wyoming and Idaho in the bottom ten:

All in all, Colorado ranks in the middle at number 18. The amount of military spending the the state if fairly large for a state of our size and population, but thanks to a highly productive work force and lots of non-military federal spending, the overall comparative size of military spending in the state does not put us near the top of the list.

Colorado in top ten of states in well being index

Every year, Gallup releases its "Well Being Index" which measures the following: 

• Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
• Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
• Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
• Community: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community
• Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily

Out of all US states, Colorado comes in fourth, behind first place Hawaii, then Alaska and Montana. Wyoming rounds out the top five for fifth place. 

Colorado is in the top ten list, yet again. In fact, according to Gallup, "Hawaii and Colorado are the only two states that have made the list of the 10 highest well-being states each year since 2008."

The Western US in general is notable for having high well being scores: 

Why does the West do so well? Well, the stereotypes about Colorado and west are often true. There is a lot of entrepreneurship, physical fitness activity, and community involvement among Westerners. Moreover, homicide rates are low in Colorado (and also in Wyoming, Utah, and Montana) adding to the "community" measure contained within the index for those states.

Climate may be a factor as well. For example, New Mexico, in terms of statistical data, is nearly as unhealthy and low-income as Mississippi. So why does New Mexico rank so much higher by this measure? It may have something to do with perceptions of how much control one  has over one's economic life and physical well being. 

See here for more on this from Gallup.

Payroll employment growth in Metro Denver hits 4-year low

According to the Establishment employment survey, total year-over-year payroll employment growth fell to 1.7 percent during December 2015. This was the lowest growth level seen since October 2011, when the growth rate was 1.6 percent.

Growth rates in payroll employment have been generally falling over the past 11 months, and the growth rate had been 4.1 percent during February 2015:

Growth rates have not fallen off this quickly since 2008, although the growth rate itself remains at relatively robust levels compared to the last economic expansion between 2003 and 2008.

In terms of employment totals, there were 1,398,000 payroll jobs in December 2015, compared to 1,374,000 payroll jobs one year earlier. That's an increase of 24,000 jobs over the year.

So, we're still looking at increases, but the rate of increase in each month has been falling.

Unless this trend reverses itself, of course, we will be facing negative job growth by the end of 2016.

(This data is for the Establishment survey which measures total payroll jobs, and not the number of persons. A person with two or more jobs could potentially show up as three jobs in this survey.)

The measure I'm using here is total nonfarm employment for the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood MSA, not seasonally adjusted.

Statewide Colorado

The metro Denver numbers show a bit more of a downward trend although the overall percentage increases are pretty similar at this point. As of December 2015, the YOY growth rate was at 1.8 percent, which translates to a gain of about 47,000 jobs from December 2014 to December 2015. In total, there were about 2,559,000 payroll jobs in December.

To compare to Denver, we might say that metro Denver was humming along with more growth than the state overall for much of 2014 and 2015, but both are now seeing growth around a little under 2 percent. Denver's growth rate has come down to match the state's rate.

Employment growth for the state is also down near 4-year lows:

Statewide, growth is being helped along by Northern Colorado economies while it's being dragged down by sluggish job growth in Grand Junction and Pueblo.

(This is the nonfarm payroll employment data for Colorado, not seasonally adjusted.)

All data used in this article is from the BLS.

Bankruptcy cases hit nine-year low in Colorado in December 2015

According to the US Bankruptcy court in Colorado, Bankruptcy filings in Colorado fell to a nine-year low in December 2015,  the lowest level recorded since January of 2007. During December 2015 there were 844 bankruptcy filings in Colorado.  During January 2007, there were 807.

Bankruptcies in Colorado have been generally declining since 2010:

The year-over-year declines have ranged from negative 10 percent to negative 20 percent in most months. Over the past year, changes have remained within this range suggesting little change to the current trend at the moment. during December 2015, bankruptcy filings were down 23.8 percent from December 2014.

It is also notable that December 2015 showed the lowest December total in ten years, coming in below December 2006's total of 874:

With such low interest rates in recent years, and thus, debt so very cheap, it has been easier for both businesses and consumers to stay ahead on their debt service and avoid bankruptcy. debt so very cheap.  We see t his reflected here, and, of course, continued improvement in the job market has helped keep bankruptcies down as well. 

In terms of homicide, Colorado among the safest places in North America

As I explained here, I think it's useless to speak of indicators like poverty or homicide in terms of a huge place like the US or Mexico. Regional differences are so large, and so many demographic variables are different form place to place, that it's useless and even dishonest to make such comparisons.

So, I prefer to look at things at the state level, or preferably at the metropolitan-area level, if the data is available.

People often speak of the US homicide rate as being unusually high, but that really relies on a couple of mistakes in examining the data. First, those who say such things usually make the arbitrary choice of excluding any country in the analysis except the so-called "developed countries" by which they really mean Western Europe. To do this, of course, excludes a huge portion of humanity, and there's no reason why a country not currently at war, like Brazil or Russia, for example, should be excluded from the analysis. (Both have much higher homicide rates than "the US," by the way) The other mistake is to compare a country the size of Finland (with 5 millions people in essentially one metropolitan area) to the United States with 320 millions people and dozens of large metro areas.

So, if we drill down a bit more, we see quickly that high homicide rates are really a regional issue in the United States, and not a nationwide issue. Let's look at both the US and Canada together:

We quickly find that the Northern US is quite comparable to Canada, which has a reputation for being remarkably safe. . And we also see that Colorado is in the second-to-lowest —low being good— category for homicide rates.

According to 2014 FBI homicide data, Colorado has a rate of 2.8 per 100,000. That puts it about equal with Alberta at 2.52 per 100,000 and Wyoming at 2.7 per 100,000. The lowest homicide rates in the nation was in New Hampshire with a rate of 0.9, and the highest was in Louisiana at 10.3. In Canada, there was a much smaller spread with the lowest rate found in Quebec at 0.86, and the highest was in the far north where homicide rates among the small populations there exceeded 10 per 100,000 in Nunavut and 8 per 100,000 in the Yukon.

The chart shows a more exact comparison among the states and provinces (Canadian provinces in red):

Moreover, we might note that Colorado is also among the safest places in the Western Hemisphere since homicide rates in the Caribbean and South America tend to be much higher than even the American South.

A Better View of Poverty Rates: We Must Consider the Cost of Living

This week a number of wire services picked up a story in which states are ranked according to which states are the "most expensive states to raise a family." The list, which was created by a private company to drive web traffic to its site, attempts to quantify the cost of raising a family by factoring in government mandated family leave, the cost of child care, and other factors.

The use of mandatory family leave is rather novel, given that mandated leave raises the effective minimum wage for many workers, and thus negatively impacts the least-skilled workers the most.  Nevertheless, the list appealed to the common-sense notion that there's more to one's standard of living than a relatively high income. The cost of living is an important factor.

The US Poverty Rate Does Not Account for Local Cost of Living 

Given the importance of the cost of living, it is very problematic that the official poverty rate totals for US states do not take costs into account.

When measuring poverty rates internationally, poverty is just defined as households that make 50 percent or 60 percent of the national median income. Although these measures often attempt to take into account differences in the cost of living among different countries, measuring poverty this way provides its own set of problems. It simply makes poverty a purely relative measure, so we end up with a situation where purchasing power for a median household in one country (say, Portugal) is actually lower than a poverty-level household in another country (say, the US).

The US official measure, on the other hand, attempts to get around this problem by defining the poverty rate as an actual dollar amount based on what a household can buy. The federal government has set the poverty income at $24,250 for a family of four in 2015.

The problem is this dollar amount is applied nationwide and then used to calculate poverty rates. So, a household in Arkansas at this income level is deemed "poor" while a household in California at the same income level is deemed equally poor. However, the cost of living in much of Arkansas is quite a bit lower than in much of California.

If we fail to adjust for the cost of living, the poverty rate  map looks like this:

In this case, the highest poverty rate is found in Mississippi with a rate of 23 percent, with Arizona and New Mexico close behind at 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively. New York and California are a dozen states down the list with poverty rates 15 percent for both. (See here for full list based on 2009 calculations.)

Many have noticed certain regional trends here, and that has led to a myriad of articles claiming that so-called "red states" have higher poverty rates than the "blue states." In many cases, "red states" is really code for "low tax" or "free-market-ish" state. In other words, this map "proves" that low taxes and freer economies cause more poverty.

This might be a conundrum if it were not for the fact that this measure of poverty completely ignores the plight of low-income households in states where the cost of living is very high. The biggest offenders here are, not surprisingly, California and New York, where rents and the cost of living in general is very high.

The feds have long recognized the discrepancy here, and in the fine print have long noted that poverty rates should only be used as very general "guidelines" or measures over time. Comparisons among states are discouraged.

That doesn't stop pundits from claiming that blue states like California and New York have been successful in combating poverty through tighter regulation of business, and higher taxation.

If we adjust the states and poverty rates for the cost of living, however, the map looks a bit different:

In this case, the state with the highest poverty rate is California at  23 percent. Arizona and Florida are close behind with rates of 22 percent and 20 percent, respectively. New York has risen to sixth place with a poverty rate of 18 percent, while Mississippi has fallen to eighth place with a rate of 17 percent.

Here we see our bias-confirming assumptions no longer seem to apply since  no correlation is apparent along the lines of the red-state/blue-state claims. Right-wing Indiana, at 15 percent, is more or less equal with left-wing Illinois, while Mississippi and New York, with widely divergent public policy regimes, also have similar poverty rates. (See Table 3.)

Obviously, we have to look somewhere beyond our neat-and-nice ideas about red states and blue states to come up with an explanation.

Of course, poverty can be a function of so many things, that it's impossible to generalize. Public policy is certainly a factor, but so are cultural factors, access to capital, the transportation infrastructure, and more. Some states are influenced by the presence of Indian Reservations (such as Arizona) where local economic policy is more influenced by federal law than state law.

But most of the discussion about "rich states" and "poor states" has long been skewed by the fact we tend to ignore cost of living.

As a final illustration, we can look at median incomes from each state. The median income figures put out by the census bureau do not account for regional "price parity."

Using just the basic median income numbers from the Current Population Survey, we get this:

The US median income is $51,849, and many high-cost states come in well above this, with Hawaii at $59,244 and California at $57,688.  Meanwhile, Mississippi and Louisiana come in at $39,011 and $39,637, respectively.

State median incomes vary by as much as $31,000, with New Hampshire coming in at $70,063 which is $31,051 higher than Mississippi.

But once we adjust incomes for price parity, we find that many of the high-income, high-cost states fall quite a bit in the list:

First, we notice that this compresses the variation in median incomes. The difference between the highest-income state (New Hampshire at $66,159) and the lowest income state (Louisiana at $43,462), shrinks to $22,697.

We also notice that New York now has the second-lowest median income in the country, right between Louisiana and Mississippi. New York now has a real median income of $44,326, while Mississippi has a real median income of $44,944. California and Hawaii fall from being near the top of the list to below the national median income, with median incomes of $51,369 in California and $50,984 in Hawaii.

Basically, the purchasing power of a median household in New York or California is much lower than has been traditionally suggested.

This is also important to keep in mind when comparing US median incomes and poverty rates to foreign countries. Much of the US is very inexpensive in terms of cost of living and well below northern Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and even Canada.
Maps and graphs by Ryan McMaken.

Colorado Foreclosures Down 19 Percent During Second Quarter

Foreclosure totals in Colorado during the second quarter of 2015 remained well down from the 2009 peak totals. There were 2,282 foreclosure filings during the second quarter of this year, which was a drop of 19 percent from the second quarter of 2014. There were 1,063 foreclosure sales at auction during the second quarter of this year, dropping 34 percent from the second quarter of last year.

Back in 2009, filings had peaked at 12,135 during the second quarter, and sales peaked at 6,686 during the first quarter of 2010:

Foreclosures are on schedule to end the year way down from 2014. So far, this year, there have been 4,154 filings and 2,208 sales at auction, which means at mid-year, filings and sales are both down 33 percent from where they were at mid-year last year. 

For more, see the state of Colorado full report:

2015_2ndQ Foreclosure Report by Ryan McMaken

Colorado is the size of New Zealand, with a GDP comparable to Thailand

Sometimes, it's easy to forget how large many American states are. Colorado, for example, is the size of New Zealand. Here's a helpful map for all states:

Source. 

But that's just comparing by physical size. If we compare by GDP, Colorado is the size of Thailand, which is not tiny. Of course, this is not per capital GDP. Per capital GDP is much higher in Colorado than in Thailand. Indeed, with five million people, Colorado generates a similar GDP to Thailand's population of 64 million people. The map:

We can also compare based on population size, in which case Colorado is similar to the small African country of Eritrea.

Home loan payoffs down 28 percent during fourth quarter of 2013

The number of home loans paid off in Colorado was down 28.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2013, but comparing the full year of 2013 to 2012, the total was up 13.0 percent. According to a report released Wednesday by the Colorado Division of Housing, public trustees in Colorado released a total of 62,312 deeds of trust during the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to 86,816 released during the fourth quarter of 2012. 

Typically, a release of a deed of trust occurs when a real estate loan is paid off whether through refinance, sale of property, or because the owner has made the final payment on the loan. Increases in release activity occur as refinance and home-sale activity increases, and rising release totals generally indicate increases in the demand for home loans and real estate.

For the full year of 2013, releases of deeds rose to 344,942, and were at the highest level recorded since 2005 when releases totaled 400,565.   

“The fourth quarter of 2013 saw some big drops in release activity in response to interest rates heading up during the second half of the year," said Ryan McMaken, an economist with the Colorado Division of Housing. "There was so much refi and sales activity during the first half of the year though, that 2013 ended up being a bigger year than 2012 overall." 

Trends in release activity were not uniform across the state, although 20 of the 21 counties surveyed for the study reported decreases in release activity from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the same period of 2013. The largest decreases were reported in Boulder and Mesa counties where release activity decreased 48.1 percent and 49.1 percent, respectively. The only increase for the period was in Alamosa County where releases rose 20.9 percent, and the smallest decrease was found in Jefferson County where releases fell 7.0 percent.

Adjusted for the number of existing housing units in each county, the counties with the highest rates of release activity were Summit, Douglas, and Jefferson counties. The counties with the least activity were Fremont, Pueblo and Delta counties.

“We see a similar pattern here to what we see with many other housing indicators," McMaken said. "Metro Denver and northern Colorado's high release activity reflect a relatively high demand for real estate while other areas, such as Pueblo and Grand Junction, are showing less activity."

Totals for releases of deeds of trust are collected quarterly by the Colorado Division of Housing. This report tracks releases of deeds of trust as reported by public trustees in Colorado. The report includes twenty-one counties which are chosen based on population size and to ensure that as many regions of the state as possible are represented. More than 90 percent of all occupied households in Colorado are within the twenty-one counties chosen.

A deed of trust is similar to a mortgage and is a lien on real property to secure payment of an indebtedness. The deed of trust contains a grant of the property to the public trustee for the benefit of the holder. The deed of trust is released when the debt is paid in full. 

A deed of trust is similar to a mortgage and is a lien on real property to secure payment of an indebtedness. The deed of trust contains a grant of the property to the public trustee for the benefit of the holder. The deed of trust is released when the debt is paid in full. 

Releases Report 2013 4thQ