Lien times for SW Denver

Neighborhoods hit hard by recent foreclosure crisis

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 18, 2007 at midnight

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Royce Morales bought a foreclosed home for $86,000 last month, about half of its previous sales price.

The Center Avenue home in southwest Denver sits smack in the middle of an area hardest hit by foreclosures. The latest tally for the 80219 ZIP code: 758 foreclosures in the past 18 months.

Morales, who is working two jobs, put $1,000 down on the three-bedroom, two-bath home with 740 square feet. Records show that it went into foreclosure last year, with $154,082.42 owed to the lender.

"I like it here," Morales said through an interpreter, his 12-year-old son, Juan. "It's calm."

Calm, however, may not be the way most people describe the Westwood neighborhood.

Or the foreclosure crisis hitting the city.

One home in Denver, which had a $149,000 loan, is now being sold by the lender for $52,000.

Of the 4,000 foreclosed homes actively being processed in Denver, a Rocky Mountain News analysis of the data shows:

• 890 of them are in the hands of whoever bought them at a public trustee auction, typically the lender;

• 1,507 have gone through the foreclosure sale, but could still be redeemed by the borrower;

• 1,557 of them are being sold by the public trustee. The status of the remaining 46 is unknown, according to city records.

The 80219 ZIP includes parts of at least nine neighborhoods, bordered by major thoroughfares including Sixth and Alameda avenues and Federal and Sheridan boulevards.

Much of Barnum and Athmar Park neighborhoods are in that ZIP code.

The neighborhoods are filled with empty homes with broken windows and yards covered with weeds, sometimes topping seven feet.

One house had an old couch tossed in its front yard, while the houses on either side have neatly trimmed lawns.

A review of the people who have foreclosed on their homes shows a good portion are Hispanic.

April Crumley, president of the Concerned Citizens for Barnum, said Hispanics are especially vulnerable to losing their homes. They are talked into getting loans that they don't understand.

"I'm talking Hispanic lenders to Hispanic customers," she said.

She said some lenders charge a total of 6 percent in fees, far more than what most lenders charge.

"It's all rolled into the loan somewhere," Crumley said. "Borrowers do not understand ARMS, and the lenders are seeing dollar signs. It is a travesty all around."

Last winter, a number of empty houses were torched and Crumley finds herself calling the police about suspected meth labs.

"What I'm preaching now is emotional investing in the neighborhood," she said.

"We aren't seeing it now. This could be a nice neighborhood, if it received a little TLC."

It's not just lenders, but buyers who are increasingly contributing to the foreclosure crisis, said Karen Cuthbertson, president of the Athmar Park Neighborhood Association.

"There are people like the gentleman across the street who bragged how this was the third home he bought using false documentation," Cuthbertson said. "He took a sledgehammer and ripped out all of the copper pipes and then left. They're predatory borrowers."

She said much of the focus by legislators and politicians has been on the "poor distraught home buyer, and clearly that is a valid market."

But she said the reality is that there are an increasing number of buyers who are just as culpable as any predatory lender.

And as in Barnum, Athmar Park is suffering more now from foreclosed homes than it did in the 1980s, he said.

"A couple blocks away from me, probably seven of the 10 houses on the street are empty," she said.

Loans gone bad

Breakdown of loan types for foreclosures processed by the city of Denver in the last 18 months:

• Colorado Housing and Finance Authority    6

• Commercial loans    11

• Conventional    3,900

• FHA-insured    82Source: City Of Denver

rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207

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