Last weeks headlines read “Colorado Foreclosures Down 28%”. Almost every buyer I work with has an interest in looking at
foreclosures. Foreclosures are big news, but are they in Boulder Colorado and the surrounding county? After reading the article I decided to delve more deeply into the issue and give you an idea of how common bank owned homes are in our real estate market.
My first stop was to do a quick tour of my MLS system to see how many foreclosed properties are listed for sale in various areas.
- Boulder – 10 Foreclosures of 664 total listing or 1.5%
- Louisville – 3 Foreclosures of 82 total listing or 3.6%
- Lafayette – 11 Foreclosures of 151 total listing or 7.2%
- Longmont – 36 Foreclosures of 476 total listing or 7.5%
- Superior – 4 Foreclosures of 49 total listing or 8.1%
- Erie – 8 Foreclosures of 172 total listing or 4.6%
- Broomfield – 16 Foreclosures of 376 total listing or 4.2%
- Frederick/Firestone – 11 Foreclosures of 170 total listing or 6.4%
The highest percentage is in Superior at 8% and the lowest percentage of foreclosure listings is in the City of Boulder where just 1.5% of listings were bank owned.
I also looked at the % of homes that in the foreclosure process using Realist which is a public records tool available through my MLS system. Here are the percentage of homes in some stage of foreclosure (rolling 3 month average) for some selected zip codes.
- 80301 (Gunbarrel) – .43%
- 80302 (downtown Boulder)- .41%
- 80305 (Table Mesa) – .23%
- 80027 (Louisville/Superior) – .39%
- 80516 (Erie) – 1.14%
- 80530 (Frederick) – 2.81%
- 80501 (East Longmont) – 1.09%
- 80503 (West Longmont) – .6%
These are very low percentages across the board. The area with the fewest number of homes active in the foreclosure process was the Table Mesa area in South Boulder.
Here are some screen shots showing density of foreclosures in a few select neighborhoods.
Louisville:
Erie:
Firestone:
The maps include properties in pre-foreclosure, bank owned, REO sales (not sure how far back) and Short Sales. I chose an area for each locale that had the most distressed properties. There is quite a difference between different areas. The map for Boulder is very similar to Louisville.
My conclusion is that if a buyer is looking at foreclosure properties exclusively they will not have very many properties from which to chose. We have been very lucky in that our values have held fairly steady and distressed sales are not a huge part of the market. If you would like a list of the foreclosures currently available in Boulder County, please let me know. I would be happy to assist you in your search. I am a HUD approved broker and can help you bid and purchase a HUD home as well.
Links:
Boulder County Public Trustee these properties are only for those buyers who are willing to purchase a property site unseen for cash with no inspection.
