Friday, May 18, 2012

Hosuing News Digest, May 18

Colorado Community Bank sold to Texas owner Colorado Community Bank, a $500 million bank with 18 branches along the Front Range and Eastern Plains, is changing hands. Washington Investment Co., based in Yuma, announced today that it has agreed to sell its full ownership stake in the bank to Carlile Bancshares Inc., which is based in Fort Worth, Texas.

 Campus Crest Communities and SolarCity to Provide Student Residents with Renewable Energy The Grove(R) brand, today announced a partnership with SolarCity, a national leader in clean energy products and services, to install more than 9,000 solar panels on its student housing communities located in Greeley, Colorado; Flagstaff, Arizona; and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

  Eagle second worst county for Colorado foreclosure sales in first quarter of 2012 While Colorado’s residential real estate market as a whole is slowly climbing out of an historically deep hole, Eagle County remains mired in the depths of a housing crash that started late in 2008. Eagle County - which slices through the Roaring Fork Valley and includes parts of Basalt, El Jebel and Missouri Heights - was the second worst county in the state in terms of foreclosure sales during the first three months of 2012. Only tiny San Juan County in southwestern Colorado had a higher percentage of homes sold in foreclosure auctions in the first quarter of 2012, according to a recent report issued by the Colorado Division of Housing (pdf).

Denver-area construction jobs: not enough workers to go around DENVER — There’s at least one booming industry in Colorado right now, desperately looking for workers: the construction industry. After a decade of doldrums, Colorado construction is hot again. Between February 2011 and February 2012, the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield area added 6,300 construction jobs, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. That’s more than anywhere else in the United States. Right now, about 137,000 Coloradans are working in construction.

US housing starts rose to 717,000 in April U.S. builders began work on more homes last month, evidence that the battered housing market is slowly healing. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes in April from March. That's 2.6 percent more than March's total, which was revised higher. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.