Drew Harwell, TampaBay Times Staff Writer |
“Half a decade since the housing bust, many foreclosures are showing their age.A quarter of cases now in Hillsborough court are at least 3 years old.
So who’s keeping Florida’s more than 350,000 pending foreclosures in court?Judges largely blame the banks. State court data show banks regularly delay cases so long that judges drop them for lack of action.
That’s right: The same industry facing billions of dollars in punishment for hastily whizzing foreclosures through court a few years ago now isn’t moving fast enough, court leaders say.
“Foreclosures should be one of the simplest forms of civil litigation … but the lenders are sometimes their own worst enemies,” said Thomas McGrady, chief judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit over Pinellas and Pasco counties.
“For whatever reason — a business decision, moratorium issues or they’re just overloaded — they don’t seem willing to push the cases they’ve filed,” he said.
Banks defend their foreclosure practices by blaming overloaded courts for the slog.
“We’re trying to speed (cases) up after we get to the point where we can’t work with the borrower anymore,” but court overloads are a bottleneck, said Anthony DiMarco, the head state lobbyist for the Florida Bankers Association.”I don’t think anyone was geared for the magnitude of what was coming.”
Whoever is to blame, you won’t find many lawyers or homeowners complaining. In fact, they argue slowdowns are exactly what most cases need.
They allow homeowners to work on short sales or loan modifications that save the banks money and keep people in their homes. And they keep repossessed homes from flooding the market, preserving local home prices and helping neighborhoods.
But with a “faster foreclosures” bill approved by lawmakers and now awaiting Gov. Rick Scott’s response, lawyers worry the cases will be squeezed through court, hurting both homeowners and banks.”