The Newest Game In Town
Hurricanes and oil gushers aren’t enough, so now we have “Florida Foreclosure Fraud” to make the state somewhere that people want to avoid.
Mike Konczal is running a series with graphics to explain what is happening. He calls it: Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies. [You can read it even if you aren’t a Republican.]
The Miami Herald has a cheerful little backgrounder about the realization that this isn’t an isolated problem: Foreclosure freeze widens as fears grow.
Finally, courtesy of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s investigation, here’s the full deposition of an employee of a law firm filing “creative” documents in foreclosure cases in Florida. [Depositions are taken under oath and false statements are punishable as perjury. This is not a conversation with a reporter.]
The bottom line for Florida is that you can’t get a clear title to property in the state until this is cleared up, because it isn’t obvious who owns what if the property was mortgaged. This brings real estate sales to a screeching halt in the state.
2 comments
This is bad news indeed. We already see too many abandoned homes with weeds tall enough to obscure a horse! This week, we had an appraiser at our home tell us that some of the bank-owned foreclosure homes he sees are downright scary to visit. As responsible homeowners, all we want is to see them moved into, cleaned up and fixed up. I hope that’s not asking for too much in Florida.
The banks are responsible for upkeep, but the local governments have to get on their case. In my town they would have already received the “you clean it, or we will” letters, and the town puts a pretty high price on cleaning up property.
Abandoned property is not a good idea in Florida. I have done a number of rehabs with/for a friend, and after a month the humidity takes its toll. If the power is out and the refrigerator is closed, you usually have to junk it, because the mildew will take over. Same in the bathrooms. If you are lucky you can clean the carpet, but I wouldn’t count on it.
The water dries out in the traps in the sewage system, and the sewer smell will enter the house.
It doesn’t take long to really damage a vacant house, even if no one breaks in and vandalizes it.
I don’t see the point in foreclosing if the bank isn’t prepared to put the house on the market. They would be better off doing a mortgage modification, if at all possible, to maintain cash flow, and keep the house “alive”.