BY ROBERT SILK
MONROE COUNTY — Echoing
national trends, the Florida Keys saw a large drop in foreclosure
filings during the first quarter of the year. But analysts don’t believe
the shift is a sign of an improving housing market.
Rather,
the nationwide drop is largely the result of foreclosure delays
implemented by banks last fall in response to allegations of forgery and
other irregularities in paperwork processing.
“Weak
demand, declining home prices and the lack of credit availability are
weighing heavily on the market, which is still facing the dual threat of
a looming shadow inventory of distressed properties and the probability
that foreclosure activity will begin to increase again as lenders and
servicers gradually work their way through the backlog of thousands of
foreclosures that have been delayed due to improperly processed
paperwork,” RealtyTrac Chief Executive James Saccacio said in a prepared
statement earlier this month.
Lenders
brought 255 foreclosure filings in Monroe County during the months of
January through March, or one for every 213 homes, according to
RealtyTrac. That’s down 48 percent from the same period last year.
Statewide foreclosure filings were down 62 percent compared to last
year.
Keys foreclosure filings were
also off 15.5 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to
October through December of last year.
In
the fall, several major lenders halted or slowed foreclosure filings
after it was uncovered that lenders were signing foreclosure-related
documents without first reading and verifying the information — a
practice known as robo-signing. In states which require foreclosure
actions to be heard in the courts, including Florida, the robo-signing
scandal has also provided fodder to foreclosure defendants. As a result,
even many cases that are underway are moving slower than they did in
the past.
Ken Thomas, and independent
bank analyst who lives on Windley Key, said that in this case the
slowdown in foreclosure filings is actually a bad thing.
“At
first glance you would say, ‘Wow, that’s good,'” Thomas said. “But in
reality it is not good from an economic perspective because what we’re
trying to do is reach the bottom of this morass. If you are artificially
going to hold up foreclosures or limit them in any way, you are going
to slow down reaching the bottom.”
However,
Upper Keys Realtor Tracy Larson, an agent with Schwartz Property Sales,
said the foreclosure slowdown could actually prove helpful to this area
in the short run.
“Maybe it makes it
look like the market is not as distressed as it really is,” she said. “I
think it is going to help stabilize the market.”
Larson
said she has noticed that banks, in lieu of foreclosure, have become a
bit more willing to negotiate with sellers who are proposing short
sales, where the lender accepts less than the amount owed on a home.
In
the long run, however, she expects there are still difficult times
ahead for the local real estate market.
“I
really don’t think we’re going to hit a bottom and have gigantic
increases,” Larson said. “I think we’ll hit a low, have a little
stabilization, then hit a low. I think we’re just going to bounce around
the bottom for a while.”
rsilk@keysnews.com
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