A decade ago, speculators in Florida were pumping up a huge housing bubble.
“You couldn’t go wrong,” Tampa real estate attorney Charlie Hounchell says. In that overheated period from 2001 to 2006, “you could buy a house and make $100,000 a year later by selling it,” he says.
But the party ended in 2007 and the hangover persists. The state now has the highest foreclosure rate in the country, beating out Nevada for the first time in five years.
Experts say the legal process in Florida is the key reason for the sluggish pace of foreclosures there.
A Three-Minute Trial
The busy lobby inside the Hillsborough County courthouse in Tampa is noisy with defendants, lawyers, even crying babies. But inside a fourth-floor courtroom, it’s all business — as focused and streamlined as possible.
“I enter a final judgment of foreclosure for the total sum of $194,256.49 with a public sale date of March 11 at 10 a.m.,” Judge Judy Pittman Biebel says as she delivers a verdict. The entire foreclosure trial took about three minutes.
Biebel is a retired judge from Panama City, Fla., who travels to Tampa to sit on the bench for a week at a time — specifically to handle foreclosure cases.
“We work cheap,” she says with a laugh, “and we’re paid $350 a day.”
The state funds these additional judges to help deal with the enormous backlog of foreclosures. One in every 32 Florida households received a notice of default, auction or repossession in 2012 — more than double the national average.
Florida is getting it from both ends: Foreclosures are still coming in at a high rate, and they’re very slow going out. In fact, it’s taking nearly 2 1/2 years to get through the judicial process.
Biebel says the courts stay busy.
“Today was all nonjury trials,” she says. “Yesterday was various motions all day long. So we sit and do this all day long. ”
And this speedy trial — over in just minutes — stands in stark contrast to the foreclosure process, which typically starts years earlier.
Real estate agents say the backlog of distressed homes makes it tough for the Florida housing market to recuperate. Those homes depress prices and create uncertainty in neighborhoods.
Florida’s ‘Broke’ Legal Process
Why does it take so long to get these foreclosed houses back on the market?
Analysts say the cumbersome legal process in Florida sets the state apart from other hard-hit states.