El Paso County foreclosures continue to rise, keeping the area on pace this year for its highest annual total of foreclosures since the late 1980s.

Foreclosures totaled 307 in April, 52.7 percent more than the same month last year, according to figures compiled by the El Paso County Public Trustee’s Office.

For the first four months of 2007, foreclosures were running 45 percent ahead of the same period last year. At that rate, this year’s foreclosures could top 3,000 for the first time since 1988, when El Paso County reached a record 3,476.

The percentage of homes in foreclosure countywide now is lower than the late 1980s; there are many more homes in El Paso County today than 20 years ago, so foreclosures are spread over more households.

A foreclosure is a legal action taken by a lender against a homeowner when payments are missed, and can lead to the loss of a home. Homeowners don’t always lose their homes, however; they sometimes refinance their loans or come up with money from relatives, which allows them to stave off the loss of the home.

Increased numbers of foreclosures could hurt the local housing market.

More than 6,000 homes were listed for sale last month in the area, the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors said last week. Foreclosed homes that are added to the mix can make it even tougher to sell a home.

Also, too many foreclosed homes in a particular neighborhood could hurt property values.

“It certainly could, and could be neighborhood-specific,” Colorado Springs economist Dave Bamberger said of the potential effect foreclosures could have on property values.

Countywide, however, Bamberger said he isn’t overly worried about housing appreciation. Increased numbers of foreclosures cold hurt values by maybe one-half of 1 percent, he said.

“I don’t see it as a huge drag on the local housing market,” Bamberger said. “The impacts are hitting the homeowners who are losing their homes and the lenders who are see their loans in default.”

Experts attribute rising foreclosures, in part, to adjustable-rate mortgages that carried lower payments during the first few years of the loans. Rates on many of those loans have adjusted upward, and some homeowners can’t keep up with the higher payments.

In other cases, lenders in the past couple of years made higher-interest loans to borrowers with shaky credit histories — so-called subprime loans — and many of those mortgages have wound up in default.

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