Trick of the light: Colorado real estate still living in time when flat is good.

• Author: Lewis, David

One of the tricky parts of a recession is that no two downturns are quite the same. The mid-1980s recession was triggered by a nasty slump that already had ended in most of the country. But in those days Colorado was a big part of the oil patch, and when commodities prices capsized in the wake of a national recession, the economy here drowned, pulling real estate down with it.

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"The downturn today is very different. That earlier one was driven by oil and loss of jobs, and we've had a bit of job loss, but Denver's economy is still very strong," says Realtor Dano Keys, broker-associate with Denver-based Your Castle Real Estate. "What has driven so much of this is too-easy credit for people."

The drowning pool we're in today has its roots in real estate, so if anything it's nastier than its predecessor 25 years back. The state's nearly 9,000 current foreclosures attest to that. RealtyTrac ranks Colorado foreclosures eighth among states as of August 2009, jumping 39.7 percent since August 2008.

To switch cliches, the problem with the light at the end of the tunnel is that it's a brand-new tunnel and no one knows just how far away that light is. The good part, of course, is that there is light ahead.

And that's where Colorado stands now. "I do think we're starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, I really do," says Danielle Rollo, broker associate with Southern Colorado Realty in Trinidad.

So there you go.

A couple of other things are worth noting about real estate tunnels. One is that even real estate is subject to the benefits of technological advances and the federal government's efforts to stimulate them; the other is that, economically, Colorado is made up of at least four distinct regions.

Prospective homebuyers on the Front Range today might be asking themselves if prices are low enough to bite on buying a new home, if they might qualify for a mortgage in this credit-starved environment, and whether the government will pay enough for new solar panels to make them worthwhile. But prospective homebuyers and owners on the Western Slope still are asking themselves whether they'll still have a job next week.

Nor is the picture cheerier on the commercial side, which is staggering through a classic commodity-driven Colorado boom-bust cycle.

"Grand Junction has been fortunate in that we had natural gas drilling next door in Garfield County, and a little bit in Mesa County, that kept our commercial prospects very...