Florida Foreclosure Legal Update On Your Private Property Rights

Florida Foreclosure Legal Update On Your Private Property Rights

There are some Florida lawmakers who are scrambling to find a way to unclog the Florida judicial court backlog of foreclosure processing and legal procedures.

The average time for a Florida Foreclosure to make it through the filing and court system is about 638 days. The Senate Judiciary committee in Florida is trying to figure out how this long two year proess can be shortened before the Wall Street reforms step in to bar nonjudicial foreclosures.

Please contact your Florida State Senators and let them know that Florida residents want full access to their judicial rights in a foreclosure action. This is a protection for the homeowner. While many argue that we need to get through to the bottom of the foreclosure mess here in Florida- sidestepping our property rights is not the answer. While I am no happier than the next person making their mortgage payment I also do not agree with hurrying up the due process. You never know when you might be the person in that situation.

Senator David Simons (R) from Maitland Florida drafted a bill that would change the Florida Statute 702.10 which is a law that was written in 1993 which says that a property owner has the right to "show cause" why a final judgment should not be entered on an expedited basis.

This bill was not on the agenda yet as of last Friday. Please call Senator David Simons office and tell him to not draft any bill that will jeopardize our rights to a judicial foreclosure. We are talking about property rights here and those are being stripped from us at every turn.

Adopting any non-judicial laws will have to deal with private property rights laws.

The Florida Bankers Association asked Senator David Simons to work on some way to clear thebacklog of foreclosures, 371,000 of them. They also said that this new bill will only affect the foreclosures that are currently in the system. Whenever a politician or a law maker says this - beware. Those temporary rulings and statutes end up being permanent.

His bill is not completely drafted yet and it is also not online for us to read yet. I really don't care about when, the time to call the Senator is now. Banksters tried to draft another bill a couple of years ago to get rid of our judicial process as homeowners and property owners and it failed because we spoke up about it. The bank lobbyists did not go away, they are just there trying another way into the law chambers and the statutes to benefit their companies. The post I wrote about that bill is called: We Are The Banksters and We Are Here To Help You. ( 2010)

Florida is one of 21 states where we still have property rights in a foreclosure proceeding.Homeowners here have the right to raise defenses and the banks have to get a judge's order to take the house from the homeowner.

The Florida lawmakers are in agreement that the foreclosure clog must be cleaned out and get these homes past the foreclosure and back on the market. As a Realtor® it would make sense from a business standpoint to agree but from a private property owner standpoint- I do not agree that this is in our best interest. Getting the homes foreclosed on and into the hands of new homeowners is not helping the homeowner who is fighting the bank to stay in their home or the one who is trying to do a short sale but their bank is slower than molasses in the process of approving their short sale. They are barking up the wrong tree.

All the measures to try to expedite the judicial process or get rid of our judicial process have fallen flat over the last 6 years of the banks trying this. Now they think they have a shot at this. Please let them know, call Tallahassee today and tell them that we do not want to lose our private property rights and that we are not in support of expediting the court cases. The main reason the system is clogged up is because the banks can not prove they actually own the notes on most of our mortgages and that they hired robo-signers to hurry up their process. It is not the homeowner's fault that the banks can not prove the validity of their notes or ownership thereof. It is the homeowner who would suffer should such legislation get passed.

Take action today. As an NAR member you promised to uphold private property rights. Call your Florida Senator today.