Local CBS interview this week

The latest from the local CBS affiliate (CBS4):

Snip: 

“We know that vacancy in single family rentals is very, very low, two percent or so. Vacancy in apartments is about 4.3 percent. Those are very low levels,” said McMaken.

That is one factor putting pressure on housing demand. Another is cost.
“Colorado is consistently in the top three of the places college grads say they want to move. People are moving here. They’re staying here. Because where else are they going to go?” said McMaken.

Fox31 Clip: Multifamily Construction

From last weekend:

DENVER — This year in Denver, more than three thousand building permits have been issued to developers putting up apartment buildings, which in turn means there are thousands of construction jobs which need to be filled by skilled workers.

“Construction jobs didn’t bounce back after the initial drop off following the financial crisis, we had just seen a long steady decline that happened from 2007 really until very recently when we started to see construction jobs tick back up,” said state housing expert, Ryan McMaken. “But if job growth were really good, we’d probably be seeing far more demand that we’re seeing now.”

Latest Scholarly Publication

I'm a contributor to the upcoming Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought, coming soon from SAGE Publications.

I'll be providing the entry on Conservatism.

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More clippings from today and yesterday

Boulder County, state foreclosure filings on pace for lowest year since 2006(Daily Camera)

"Completed foreclosures continue to head down at a steady pace," said Ryan McMaken, economist for the Colorado Division of Housing. "As home sales and home prices, rise, it's getting a little easier to avoid that final foreclosure sale through a short sale or even a conventional sale." Weissmann noted that Boulder County saw just six such sales last week while many other Colorado counties are recording double digit auction sales each week.

County foreclosure sales see big drop(Ft. Collins Coloradoan)

“Larimer County continues to see improvement in employment, foreclosures, home sales, vacancies and rents (from an owners’ perspective),” said Ryan McMaken, economist for the Colorado Division of Housing. “Looking at all of that and the fact that Fort Collins/Loveland has low unemployment, it’s not terribly surprising that the foreclosure situation continues to improve.”

Fewer homes auctioned off(Pueblo Chieftain)

Ryan McMaken says foreclosure sales fell nearly 24 percent in the first three quarters of 2012, compared with the same period last year. There were about 12,000 foreclosure auction sales through September, down from 15,000 in the first nine months of 2011, the agency said. 

Latest foreclosure data release, Nov. 8

I released the state's foreclosure data today.

9News picked it up:

Also, The Den Post:

Foreclosure sales in Colorado down 23.6 percent so far this year  

Foreclosure auction sales through September were 11,898 compared to 15,565 in the first nine months of 2011."Completed foreclosures continue to head down at a steady pace," said Ryan McMaken, economist for the Colorado Division of Housing. "As home sales and home prices, rise, it's getting a little easier to avoid that final foreclosure sale through a short sale or even a conventional sale."

October 30, 2012 clippings

Denver Post: Denver metro apartment vacancies fall; rents rise

Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, said that a big factor for the low vacancy rate is that apartment construction hasn't kept up with demand. Earlier in the decade people were leaving apartments because they thought they could afford a home. As a result, demand for apartments decreased and little apartment construction happened.

Now, said McMaken, apartments are being built, but still not nearly enough to keep up with household formations among young people along with migration into the city.

Through Sept. 10 of this year, 1,644 apartment units have been added to the market. That compares to 1,146 in all of 2011 and just 498 in 2010.
...
McMaken said that the lowest vacancy rates recorded in the past 30 years were 3.6 percent in both the third quarter of 1982 and the third quarter of 1994 .

 Boulder County Business Report: Apartment vacancy rate low, rents high

"The average rent has grown year over year in every quarter for the past two and a half years, and it has recently begun to accelerate." Colorado Division of Housing spokesman Ryan McMaken said in the release. "The rent growth we're now seeing is starting to look like what we experienced in the days of the dot-com boom."

Denver Business Journal: Denver apartment vacancy rate hits 12-year low

“The average rent has grown year over year in every quarter for the past two and a half years, and it has recently begun to accelerate,” Ryan McMaken, Division of Housing spokesman, said in a statement. “The rent growth we’re now seeing is starting to look like what we experienced in the days of the dot-com boom.”

Fort Collins-Loveland metro area has highest apartment rents in state

Fort Collins-Loveland metro area has highest apartment rents in state (Denver Post, 10/19/2012)

...
Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, said that apartment rents in the Fort Collins-Loveland area rose to an average of $996 in the second quarter of this year, the most recent period for which data is available.
That's higher than the $979 for the Denver metro area, which traditionally has the state's highest rents.
McMaken noted that the figures are for metro areas only. "Fort Collins-Loveland is probably not higher than Aspen," he said.
...
"It looks like the two are converging again, so they could reverse themselves," McMaken said. "They have similar rents now because they're the two markets with the most growth and the lowest vacancies."
McMaken said the vacancy rate in Fort Collins-Loveland was 3.5 percent in the second quarter, close to the 3 percent figure that is considered "very low." Denver's vacancy rate in the second quarter was 4.8 percent.
"There's been a ton of new construction in Loveland, and that area has a lower unemployment rate than Denver — substantially lower, in fact," McMaken said.

Coloradoan article on homeownership

Home ownership: An American dream in decline (9/1/12)

While home ownership rates have fluctuated, they are retreating to more reasonable levels before a spike in the early 2000s — levels Weiler called “an aberration.” Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the Division of Housing in the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, agreed home ownership is not going away, just stabilizing. Rates “were at unsustainable numbers for awhile,” he said. Back in the ’60s when the country experienced real wealth growth, home ownership topped out at 65 percent, he said.

In the ’90s, numbers jumped again when “more people were able to get into more homes by adopting more debt,” he said. “It wasn’t part of a larger issue where income was growing so everyone was running around buying houses.” And it’s likely the rate will go up again as rental units shrink and rents rise, McMaken said. “Eventually rents will get so high due to low vacancies people will become very interested in buying,” he said. “That will drive up sales prices then we will see owners of single-family rentals begin to sell them rather than rent them out.”

Denver Post, September 2012

Foreclosures up 4 percent in Colorado metro counties (9/21/12)

"With all of the slowdowns and administrative delays that pushed foreclosure filings down so far last year, I expected a larger increase in filings this year," said Ryan McMaken, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing. "Instead, new foreclosures are only up slightly this year, while completed foreclosures really dropped off, reflecting last year's big drop in new filings."

The DBJ on rents, August 2012

The DBJ on rents:

Meanwhile, vacancy rates statewide fell to an average of 4.9 percent in the six metro areas tracked by the report. That rate is the lowest statewide average since 2001, when a 4.3 percent rate was logged in the first quarter. Vacancy rates below 5 percent are considered a tight market.

“We’re now seeing signs of the kind of general rent growth across all metros that we haven’t seen since 2008,” Ryan McMaken, spokesman with the Colorado Division of Housing, said in a statement. “Limited supply is an issue. New units are on the way, but there’s a lag on that, and some metros aren’t seeing much new construction at all.”

DP reports on the market effects of fires

The DP reports on the market effects of fires:

According to Ryan McMaken, Community relations director for the Colorado Division of Housing, many people displaced by the High Park and Waldo Canyon fires might soon be looking to snap up single-family rentals.

Although that expected surge probably won't affect the official vacancy rates for next quarter — the survey's sample size is so large, and single-family homes aren't taken into account when calculating rental-vacancy rates — McMaken said rental prices in areas close to where the homes burned will probably be driven up.

"I would assume, since most of them are losing their homes in a certain area, they're going to want to be near that in the process of rebuilding," McMaken said. "However, they might have a hard time locating a specific kind of property they need. If they have animals, that means there can be a small amount of properties in demand for the next year or 18 months.
"It's going to have an effect, but it's going to be limited and show up in a limited way in our larger metrowide numbers," McMaken added.

Colorado Daily, August 7

The Colorado Daily did a nice piece on rental in Boulder recently:

Ryan McMaken, of the Colorado Division of Housing, said a survey taken on June 10 revealed a zero vacancy rate for properties in Boulder's campus area -- including rentals between Pearl Street and Baseline running north and south; and Pleasant View Road and Fourth Street going east and west.

"It's pretty rare to see something this low," McMaken said, noting that  Boulder has not had a vacancy rate of zero since at least 1994.