A recent meat-and-potatoes placement

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Apartment vacancies hit 6.5 percent
Denver Business Journal

Apartment vacancies in metro Denver increased in the third quarter because of the soft national economy, but remained relatively low by recent standards, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Division of Housing...

“The rental market is being affected by the financial markets,” said Ryan McMaken, community relations director for the Division of Housing.

9News piece on foreclosures

It is apparently unspeakably difficult to produce a screenshot of video of myself in which I look decent. However, this was a pretty good story.

While I prefer to put the division director in front of the camera, sometimes I have to be the spokesman:



A partial transcript:

"From 2006 to 2007 we had this huge jump, 40 percent. The number jumped from about 28,000 filings in 2006 to 39,000 filings in '07. I'm estimating we'll probably see about 45,000 to 50,000 filings in 2008," said Ryan McMaken with the Division of Housing.

McMaken says a recent report from the Pew Charitable Trust that forecasted one out every 25 homeowners in Colorado would likely go into default in the next two years wasn't necessarily offering any new information. McMaken pointed out that such a statistic doesn't necessarily indicate that there will be a correlating increase in foreclosure.

"One in 25 does seem very high, but you want to keep in mind that this is only dealing with defaults, so we're talking about those homeowners that have become 90 days overdue in their payments. It doesn't necessarily mean that default will end up in foreclosure," said McMaken.

Many have been wondering if the crisis on Wall Street has "bottomed out." The same could be asked of the housing/foreclosure crisis. Much like the nebulous stock market, the answer for the housing sector is fluid.

"That's very difficult to say, certainly for 2008 I don't think it's the case that we've bottomed out," said McMaken.

A Great CNN Money Video on the Hotline

CNN Money came to town to work on a foreclosure story. I was able to have them feature both our Division Director and one of our board members in the story. They ended up producing this great video.

New Foreclosure Hotline YouTube Channel

I put together a YouTube channel for all the video content we've produced around the Foreclosure Hotline. Recently, Fireside Production made a great mini-documentary about the Hotline which I've featured on the channel.

Twitter and Facebook make you a better person

Well, at the very least, they improve your "ambient awareness" of other people, which is apparently a good thing. Jeremy Liew explains, as does the extensive NYT article on the topic.

I must admit, I don't mind hearing about it when a friend microblogs about writing cover letters.

About Ryan

This is an online portfolio. Simply click on the information you'd like to see. Due to the limitations of the Blogger software, the files are posted as JPEGs. PDF files will be available soon through my Linkedin Box.net application.

My Résumé

My Bio

My Linkedin Profile

My work on the Colorado Blue Ribbon Panel on Housing

My Foreclosure Hotline YouTube Channel

Publications Portfolio

Government Relations Work

Portfolio of Press Releases and Research, etc.

My Work on The Colorado Foreclosure Hotline

About Ryan

Click here for my bio.