Foreclosure free ride: 3 years, no mortgage payment

In some states, delinquent borrowers have been squatting in their homes much longer. In Florida, the average time was 861 days, and in New York it was 1,056 days — close to three years. “Perhaps a million foreclosures could have been pursued last year but weren’t,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for real estate investment company, Carrington Holdings. But that’s all about to change, he said. “We’re going to see an increase in the speed of foreclosures and a higher number of foreclosure starts.” In fact, there are indications that the pace of foreclosures are already starting to pick up. While overall foreclosure activity was down during the first quarter, filings were up 10% in the 26 states where foreclosures must undergo court scrutiny, according to RealtyTrac. It was in these judicial states that the processing of foreclosures slowed the most following news of the robo-signing scandal, said Blomquist. Many banks in these states stopped filing foreclosures unless they were extremely confident it would pass muster in the court. (In non-judicial states, foreclosures are reviewed by a trustee, which is a third party such as a title company and less likely to parse every legal document). But now lenders can move more confidently, said Brandon Moore, RealtyTrac’s CEO. In the judicial state of Indiana, for example, foreclosure filings were up 45% year-over year. And in Florida, they were up by almost 26%, according to RealtyTrac. THE $26 BILLION CRAPSHOOT “The dam may not burst in the next 30 to 45 days, but it will eventually burst, and everyone downstream should be prepared for that to happen — both in terms of new foreclosure activity and new short sale activity,” Moore said in a statement. The resulting flood could bring home prices down even further — yet another impetus for the banks to clear out their foreclosure pipeline as quickly as possible, said Kansas State’s Higgins. Then, industry thinking is, the housing market would be able to get back to normal and home prices could eventually find their true value. Some industry analysts, such as the chief economist for listing site Zillow, Stan Humphries, are predicting that could happen as soon as the end of the year. Zillow estimates that home values nationwide will fall another 3.7% by the end of 2012, and that price will likely bottom out by early 2013.