Posts Tagged ‘foreclosures in Florida’

The Florida Supreme Court Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases speaks out: Chastises Banks and Banks’ Attorneys.

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Today, the Florida Supreme Court Task Force on Residential Foreclosure Cases issued their final report. While the report is over 50 pages in length, they are making a number of very important recommendations that should help Florida homeowners.

Specifically, they are requiring mandatory mediation for all homestead property in every county in the State of Florida. Right now, only a few counties including Miami Dade and Palm Beach County have mandatory medication. The report states that in those counties where there has been mandatory mediation, approximately 75 percent of all cases are settled in mediation. Further, the Task Force is recommending that there be pre-suit mediation in order to reduce the clogging of the court system. The Task Force is also requiring that the banks– not the borrowers— pay for the mandatory mediation.

The Report also mentioned that mortgage modifications are becoming more effective. In fact, they mention that in those loans that have recently been modified, there has been a drop in the re-default rate by 31 percent. Further, they indicated that loan modifications overall increased 55 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009 and increased 173 percent over the past year.

The Task Force also took great issue with a number of tactics that have been used by the banks’ attorneys. Specifically, in relevant part, the Task Force stated: “A leading plaintiff’s lawyer and a major plaintiff’s law firm have been the subject of a public reprimand and sanctions due to untruthful filings with the courts. Judges continue to see affidavits of amounts due and owing signed by law firm employees, and cost affidavits charging very high service of process fees for process serving firms owned by the law firm principals. To some extent, it is fair to be concerned whether the press of the caseload is interfering with a judge’s ability to police the conduct of the firms before them in these usually uncontested, unopposed foreclosure cases.”
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Foreclosure, the Shoemaker and the Economy

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal picked up on the story that I have been talking about at cocktail parties for a year. My shoemaker has never been busier! It’s true. In this economy, while thousands of foreclosures in Florida are filed each week, shoemakers’ phones are ringing off the hook!

While it is generally well accepted that men would rather have their favorite shoes fixed than buy a new pair, it’s now women’s shoes that are also piling up for repair. While the WSJ chose not to get into the gender issue concerning shoe repair, I thought the major behavioral shift was extremely foretelling and even foreboding.

For one, this notion suggests that either women on their own or by subtle influence from their male counterparts are becoming frugal or financially desperate or both. Now, a Channel shoe that requires a new strap or heal gets fixed instead of given to Goodwill and Fendi pocketbooks that require a few stitches or a new zipper get repaired instead of ditched.

So what does this shoe analogy mean for our nation? As a foreclosure attorney, I see it like this. Shoe repair rather than purchase reflects that our savings rate is going up as a nation, as was just reported by the New York Times today. While, ordinarily that would be good news, it’s not. Increased savings means people are spending less at the malls (2008 was the worst holiday shopping season in 30 years), which means failure of local stores and decreased sales in malls and in turn, our economic crisis will first only worsen.
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