Statistics have been floating around for months (even on this site) about the foreclosure rates throughout the country. However, an article in the Denver Business Journal raises an interesting question: what’s really behind those numbers?

"What's coming through here is that more people are giving up," [Lakewood, Colorado Realtor Lance] Chayet said.

What the numbers don't tell, he added, are whether the sellers who have taken their properties off the market are doing so temporarily until after the holidays or whether sellers are so desperate that they are allowing their homes to go into foreclosure.

Colorado currently leads the country in foreclosure rates. But the article certainly makes me wonder: with Massachusetts foreclosure rates continuing to rise, and the housing market still on a downward slope, could the same thing happen here?