FIBER-OPTIC CITY
HELEN KELLER’S ‘KNIGHTS’
Centennial creates ‘business entity’ to lease cables NEWS | PG 3
A VISIT TO THE POLE
A Lions Club with vision
Southwest Plaza goes ‘North’
LOCAL | PG14
HOLIDAY | PG 26
VOLUME 35 • NUMBER 5 • DECEMBER 22, 2016
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The 2016 holiday lights and décor brighten both buildings and the people across town Photos by Stefan Krusze
Serving Arapahoe County & Surrounding Communities
Lens-eye view of the 2016 Denver Civic Center lights
See more photos on page 13 Brian Hart, of Englewood’s Frame de Art, and his wife Shelley, take in the view between festive holiday stops.
Fewer foreclosures means higher payouts— if anyone wanted them
After a person’s home is foreclosed upon, why would they turn down free money? “They won’t collect because— I don’t know. People have different reasons,” said Arapahoe County Public Trustee Cynthia Mares, whose office receives the extra revenue when a foreclosed home is auctioned for more than the defaulting homeowner owed. An overall decrease in the number of foreclosures has meant greater value for the fewer homes still sold at county auctions. That means a windfall—not for the savvy real estate investors—but for the presumably devastated former homeowners. After lawyers and property liens are paid, it is the person who lost the house that gets whatever is left. In the past, that money has often been next to nothing, but current market trends have created
The mystery of the unclaimed money
unclaimed pots of money in the tens, even hundreds, of thousands. The irony upon irony: Many times, the former homeowners do not want the money. At press time, the county’s public trustee was holding a little more than $1 million in so far unclaimed leftovers from successful home auctions. At last count, 12 of the 37 people that have some of that money coming do not seem to want it. “We have one guy—he knows we have his money, and for some reason, we don’t know why, he won’t pick it up,” Mares said of that man’s $28,000 dividend. “I have no idea why these people won’t pick up their money. A lot of times, they won’t tell us. We have one woman who has some serious mental-health issues living in a car, and we have a substantial amount of money for her.” These unclaimed amounts range from as little as $190 to as much as $864,000. Most of the or-
phan kitties are well into the tens of thousands. When these former homeowners do tell Mares’s office why they do not want the money, the reasons are sometimes related to fear of liability. In one case, the adult children of a deceased parent wanted nothing to do with their parent’s debts. But even relatives of the woman living in her car failed to facilitate collection of her payment. Some of the potential recipients simply cannot be found, despite the best efforts of the public trustee whose office does investigatory due diligence for six months before, by law, turning over unclaimed funds to the Colorado Department of Treasury, which organizes the annual Great Colorado Payback to reunite residents with their lost or forgotten money. Arapahoe County’s total in unclaimed coffers would be double its current balance were it not for
the county’s most recent transfer to the state treasurer’s office. “A lot of the times, we just can’t find anybody,” Mares said. Part of the issue could be personal devastation. Another may be ignorance of the possibility of money ever coming back to the foreclosed. Meanwhile, Colorado has seen a drop of 45 percent in houses sold at foreclosure just this year, leading bidders to pay an extra $3 million above what is owed to lenders. That is a total increase of 77 percent over last year. Arapahoe County’s foreclosure total for 2016 is down by about 200 homes from 2015. “We’re at a seven-year low right now,” Mares said. “Just last week, we had a property that sold at auction for over $200,000 more than they owed to the bank. That’s amazing.” Mares, who was appointed by Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2012, has seen a consistent reduction in foreclosures since taking office. “I just don’t know how much more it can go down,” she said. “We’re ready for the curve to start going up based on past history.”