Construction inches up as foreclosures dip from last month

 The Colorado Springs housing market got a bit of good news Friday as housing construction rebounded slightly in July from June's weak performance, while mortgage foreclosures fell from the previous month for the second time in the past three months.

Single-family home building permits in El Paso County totaled 108 in July, down 37.6 percent from a year earlier but up 11.3 percent from June's dismal total, according to a report issued Friday by the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department. The increase from the previous month was the first time housing construction numbers have risen from June to July in six years.

"I think we have hit bottom (in June) and the pace is picking up a little bit," said Mike Fenton, vice president of operations for the Colorado Springs division of Century Communities LLC. "For the first half of the year we and other builders were selling more homes than we were permitting because we were selling off our unfinished inventory. Now that we have worked off that inventory, we and others will be pulling more permits in the second half of the year."

For the first seven months of the year, permits totaled 881, down 42.7 percent from the same period a year ago. Permits are on a pace to total about 1,500 this year, which would be the lowest annual total since 1991, when 1,154 permits were issued.

"Our analysis indicates that the market has bottomed out, but lenders are still reluctant to make mortgages," making a recovery more difficult, said Fred Crowley, senior economist for the Southern Colorado Economic Forum. "It will take another 12 to 18 months for the housing market to turn around and begin recovering, especially at the national level. It may happen here six months earlier here with the additional troops arriving at Fort Carson next summer."

Fort Carson is expected to add up to 15,000 troops during the next five years, starting in mid-2009, in its biggest expansion since the Vietnam War. Most of the arriving soldiers and their families are expected to live off-post.

Foreclosure filings totaled 360 in July, up 22 percent from a year ago, but down 22.3 percent from June's total of 463, according to the El Paso County Public Trustee's Office. June foreclosure filings were the third-highest in the county's history.

Still, the 2,891 filings in the first seven months of the year is up 44.5 percent from the same period last year and just 665 filings behind last year's record 3,556 filings. At the current pace, foreclosure filings would pass last year's record sometime in September.
But if July's numbers are any indication, that pace continue to slow.

"For the first time this year, I'm willing to say that there does seem to be a slight downward trend in foreclosures in El Paso County," Public Trustee Thomas Mowle said in an e-mailed statement that accompanied his monthly report.
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