The Latest from RealtyTrak

Foreclosure Report: Montana and Colorado Better; Idaho and Utah Worse

By Robert Struckman , 10-23-08

Even as the real estate market continues its freefall in Nevada, Florida and California, foreclosure rates in Montana and Colorado have begun to drop, according to the latest figures from RealtyTrac released today.

September did not hold good news throughout the Rocky Mountains. Foreclosure rates last month continued to climb in Idaho and have doubled since last year in Utah.

RealtyTrac publishes a national database of foreclosure and bank-owned properties, with over 1.5 million properties from over 2,200 counties across the country, including from across Montana and other rural states in the West.

According to the study, foreclosures actually dropped in Colorado last month, compared both to August (down by 6 percent) and to the same month last year (down by 31 percent).

Montana had only 42 properties in foreclosure, up from August but down by half from last September, according the RealtyTrak’s figures.

Earlier this year, economists noted that interest rates on hundreds of viable rate mortgages in Montana were set to go up beginning in September. A spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted, though, that foreclosure rates nationally tended not to rise in correlation with rate resets; the owners of those properties typically went into default even before their rates jumped.

Even if Montana and Colorado seem to be recovering from the subprime crash, that good news is muted by the overall economic downturn, which has begun to be felt more fully in the Rocky Mountains in the past few months. Unemployment, still near record lows last July, has begun to rise. Higher fuel prices, in particular, have hurt consumer spending in the region.

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