The Denver Post reports from Colorado. "With more than 18,000 foreclosures expected this year, a record for the metro area, Colorado has had the highest foreclosure rate in the country. The current foreclosure epidemic traces more to overbuilding and aggressive lending than to fundamental economic problems."

"Fidelity Solutions sells about 1,000 foreclosed properties a month, a pace about 40 percent ahead of last year, president Chad Neel said. 'I am turning away business,' Neel said. 'Every client we have says there is a tsunami coming.'"

"When REO property managers can't sell a home, they call on auctioneers like Dallas-based Hudson & Marshall. 'They are telling us Colorado is very heavily hit and we will be active here for the next year and a half,' said co- owner David Webb."

"In August, Weld County had the worst foreclosure rate in the United States. Many foreclosures came on new homes sold by aggressive builders to people who had no money for a down payment and no real estate agent representing them."

"Carmen Pedrego said the builder assured her she could own a brand-new home for no more than her monthly rent. After Pedrego signed a first mortgage loan, the agent produced a second mortgage. They totaled 64 percent of the single mother's take-home pay."

"Because she had already signed one contract, 'I felt trapped, like I couldn't get out of it any more,' Pedrego said. She signed the second and made two mortgage payments, she said, then filed for bankruptcy. This year, she became one of 11 homeowners in a small Greeley neighborhood who have lost new houses in foreclosure sales."

"On one Greeley street, seven adjacent new homes have been foreclosed."

"Builders have been permitted to flood Weld County with a 'terminal oversupply' of new houses that devalued existing homes, said Lou Barnes, a Colorado mortgage bank owner."

"'People are being oversold today on homes,' said David Berenbaum, executive VP of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. 'It's not uncommon to see more than 50 percent of their income go to their mortgage payment. The debt-to-income ratios are very troublesome.'"

"In Gateway Lakes, new homes purchased in 2005 are being foreclosed in 2006. That caught the attention of David Kiekhaefer, a Greeley broker and builder, who is renting homes in the neighborhood that he and a partner built and were unable to sell in the $180,000 range."

"He found that two other builders in the same neighborhood, Mark Strodtman and Duane Zeller,were selling homes to Spanish-speaking families who were not represented by a real estate agent for as much as $245,000."

"Residents who bought houses from Strodtman, said they were lured by offers of low payments, then learned at loan closings that their monthly costs would be hundreds of dollars higher than they expected. 'They tell me in one year you can refinance,' said Librado Herrera, who does not read English and depended on Strodtman's sales assistant to explain the contract."

"When he called a lender eight months later, he said he was told his loan had a prepayment penalty and his house wasn't worth $245,000."

"Foreclosure and real estate records show the prices of his Gateway Lakes houses plunged $50,000 or more after the original buyer lost them. Pedrego's house, for one, sold for $63,000 less than the $239,000 she paid for it last year."

"Strodtman said that happened because 'the banks are dumping them' and some foreclosed houses 'are trashed.' Zeller said his homes are not overpriced and he is not enticing buyers with false promises. 'I've got six homes for sale in there' that aren't moving, he said. 'I'll sell them below cost just to get out of them.'"

"Laura Mendoza, a real estate agent who listed some of Strodtman's homes in Gateway Lakes, said she withdrew because she could not find buyers at the builder's price. 'Could I get them sold? Huh-uh,' she said. 'I didn't want to stay out there. I didn't think the prices were right. Somehow they sold them. I don't know how.'"

"The Post analysis found high foreclosure rates in several communities of one national builder, KB Home. In most cases, the loans for those homes came from KB's mortgage branch. In a Northglenn neighborhood built by KB Home, 56 of the original buyers have been foreclosed. Fifty-one, or 91 percent, got their loans from KB's mortgage company."

"In Kentfield, a Thornton neighborhood, 80 of the original buyers have been foreclosed. Seventy, or 87 percent, borrowed from KB's mortgage company. About half were foreclosed on their original loans, which KB sold to other lenders, and half refinanced before their foreclosures."

"Nearly all the original loans were insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which collects fees from borrowers to cover losses."

"'Five or six years ago, this was cornfields.' Matthew Revitte, a Greeley broker specializing in foreclosure sales, is driving through East Meadows, a neighborhood at the city's edge. Now, he said, 'it looks like Chernobyl.'"

"On one long block, Revitte counts 14 of 40 houses with defaulted loans. These were built by a local company, Lifestyle Homes, and sold at a time when it was easier to buy a house than rent one, Revitte said."

"Across the street, real estate agent Mark Llamas listed a house that went for $140,707 three years ago. After a foreclosure, it recently sold for $102,580."

"Lifestyle Homes president Brad Clarkson said he feels sorry for all the families who bought homes and lost them in East Meadows. But 'it's absolutely due to factors beyond our control,' he said. 'We had to stop building homes in East Meadows,' he said. 'We couldn't compete with the foreclosures.'"