The Foreclosure Bomb is Still Exploding in Courts

You may have heard reports that the foreclosure crisis is stabilizing, but don’t tell that to the folks at any South Florida courthouse. The bomb is still exploding in courtrooms, in filings and in frustration.

Maybe fewer foreclosure notices are going out, but the thousands upon thousands that are working their way through the legal system are straining all the resources.

Miami-Dade Judge Jennifer Bailey, who lead a statewide task force on the foreclosure problem, compared it to a highway:

"There are those homes that are vacant, that the homeowners never could afford, homes where the owners have walked away. Those foreclosure cases should be zipping along in the fast lane to summary judgment."

And there are the other cases, where the homeowner is trying hard to hold on, that should be settled early and off the road altogether. In these, the homeowner tries to get a loan modification, but the lender starts foreclosure at the same time. Eventually, the lender may drop the case because it modifies the mortgage. But the legal system has to deal with the case anyway.

Other roadblocks: Disarray inside the lending institutions. And there are a limited number of law firms that are set up to handle foreclosures for the lenders. They are slammed with work.
Meanwhile, the Florida Attorney General’s office has investigations going on about some shoddy legal maneuvering on the part of some of the “foreclosure mills.”