Word: denver
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...Denver richly illustrates, there is plenty of bottom left to wait for. It's a far cry from the days of double-digit home-price gains and mass speculation in hot markets like Las Vegas--where 40% of the houses up for sale now sit vacant. What's astonishing about this particular real estate bust, though, is the way the damage has pinballed across the financial universe: mortgage companies in Los Angeles, banks in Seattle, hedge funds in Australia, the European Central Bank, Wall Street investment houses and Main Street stockholders have all had the American real estate market fall...
...many of the safeguards built into the classic 30-year fixed rate with a 20% down payment. Riskier loans originally designed for a narrow band of home buyers--interest only, adjustable rate, balloon payment, no documentation (of income, that is)--took off broadly in the last rising market, and Denver was one of the many areas where they were...
...working for about 25,000 people who will receive a first notice of foreclosure this year in the seven-county Denver metro area, according to the housing-analytics firm the Genesis Group. That's about half the number of people who could be expected to put their homes up for sale in a normal market. The most distressed neighborhoods are seeing foreclosure rates rivaling those produced during the state's oil and gas bust of the 1980s--except these days, there aren't mass layoffs to blame. Just flat house prices and tighter credit standards, which make it harder...
Green Valley Ranch, to the east of downtown Denver, is one neighborhood having a particularly tough time. Houses are still going up in the massive multiphase development, but within the new construction lurk bus benches advertising foreclosure assistance. Many of the people who have run into difficulty are first-time buyers who jumped into mortgages they couldn't afford in the long term. Now, as they endure the heart-wrenching saga of slowly losing their homes, the whole neighborhood suffers: according to a study by Dan Immergluck at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a house loses 1% of its value...
...DENVER IS JUST ONE PIN ON THE NATIONAL map. Looking across the country, the foreclosure problem is worst in areas where house prices went wildest (southern Florida, California), where local economies are depressed (Cleveland, Detroit) and where regulators paid little attention during the go-go years (before a new law took effect in January, mortgage brokers in Colorado didn't have to be registered). But it is important to point out that while Colorado has one of the nation's highest foreclosure rates, according to property tracker RealtyTrac, many parts are doing just fine. Prices in Denver's newly...