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.

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.

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.

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.

Late December foreclosure stats update

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

Time-lapse video on the spread of foreclosures in Colorado

Here's a time-lapse map I put together on foreclosures in Colorado. Primarily, I put it together to show the spread of foreclosures from Colorado's Front Range to mountain areas and Western Slope areas.