Florida Wants to Pass New Foreclosure Laws
Florida lawmakers want to make it easier for banks to foreclose on abandoned properties as well as make lenders complete foreclosures faster.
Florida is one of the worst hit states with 360,000 foreclosure cases still winding through the courts. The average foreclosure takes about two years to process in Florida with many cases taking three or even four years.
The bill’s sponsor in the Florida House of Representatives, Kathleen C. Passidomo, stated, “We have a lot of property that needs to get back in the stream of commerce and borrowers who need to get on with their lives.”
Key provisions of Florida’s foreclosure bill:
- Any lien holder, not just the lender, could initiate the foreclosure action. A homeowners’ association could start the foreclosure without waiting for the lender.
- Vacant homes would be able to be foreclosed on much quicker once it was established that they had been abandoned.
- All documents in a foreclosure case would have to be filed right away at the beginning, instead of bit by bit as the foreclosure moved ahead.
- The key benefit for homeowners would be that lenders would only have one year, instead of five, to seek a deficiency judgment.
The main purpose behind the foreclosure bill seems to be to get rid of the backlog of foreclosures so that the housing market will recover faster.
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