While The Denver Post recently reported that completed foreclosure sales were at a five-year low in May of this year, and an informal survey by this office of various metro and mountain county public trustees confirmed that, based on filings for the first half of 2012, foreclosures are expected to be generally lower this year than in recent years, some signs suggest that lenders may just be gearing up for a new wave of foreclosures. Although the current slow down in foreclosures could reflect an improvement in Colorado’s economy, it could also result from caution by lenders after the recent $25 billion joint state and federal settlement with the nation’s five largest lenders for alleged foreclosure abuses. In addition, loans which were previously spared from foreclosure as a result of modifications may now be in default again. A recent article in The Denver Post noted that the recording of assignments of deeds of trust from mortgage loan servicers to the actual lenders who hold the loans, which recording often precedes the filing of a foreclosure, has more than doubled in the first half of this year compared with last year, and some experts warn that if only half of those recordings become actual foreclosures, “it could approach the worst of the foreclosure crisis that mushroomed in 2007.”
