Archive for the 'New York' Category

The number of homes foreclosed in Erie County, New York in August declined, based on data from the Office of the Erie County Clerk.

While foreclosures increased in many areas of the country in August, total home foreclosures in July and in August in Erie County dropped to their lowest points in more than 5 years. Foreclosure figures during other months of 2009 also showed that the foreclosure process is slowing down in Erie.

For the first 8 months of 2009, completed foreclosures throughout the county dropped by 35 percent to 930 units compared to foreclosures in 2005. Default filings this year decreased by 15 percent compared to filings in 2008 and decreased by 20 percent compared to filings in 2005.

According to Kathleen Hochul, clerk of Erie County, foreclosure filings in the third quarter also indicated the county’s lowest foreclosure pace since 2004. Foreclosures in July and in August were down by 40 percent compared to the same months last year. Hochul also said that foreclosure forecasts have been positive for existing homeowners.

Meanwhile, in another study conducted by the Western New York Law Center, a total of 424 homes foreclosed were posted in Erie County in the third quarter, a drop of 23.7 percent from foreclosures in the previous quarter and a 26.8-percent drop from the third quarter of 2008. The number is also the lowest quarterly figure recorded since 2006, except for the fourth quarter of last year when there were only 329 foreclosures.

The fourth quarter however of 2008 was the time when the state of New York implemented a 90-day foreclosure moratorium.

As residential foreclosures declined, commercial foreclosures climbed up. A total of 21 commercial properties were foreclosed in the third quarter, an increase of 13 percent from the previous quarter.

Kathleen Lynch, a senior attorney at Western New York Law Center, credited the stepped-up initiatives by the federal agencies and lenders for the drop in foreclosure postings in Erie County. In contrast to complaints against government programs in other areas, loan modifications in Erie County have been effective in containing foreclosures.

Lynch added that more homeowners in Erie have been contacting counseling agencies and seeking help before they even receive their first foreclosure notice.

According to Lynch, about 70 to 90 percent of all the clients of three of the biggest counseling agencies in Erie have sought help immediately after they missed payments. Indeed, early foreclosure intervention would cut down the number of homes foreclosed in any community.

There are several federal and state foreclosure prevention programs that have been launched to help distressed homeowners avoid foreclosures and remain in their properties. One of these programs is the Volunteer Lawyers Project Foreclosure which aims to help distressed homeowners and reduce the number of Brooklyn foreclosure homes in New York.

Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project’s (VLP) Pro Bono Foreclosure Intervention Program director Jaime Lathrop explained that his volunteer work involves helping distressed homeowners avoid foreclosures in the borough. The target of his volunteer work is the unique families of communities in Brooklyn.

Lathrop said that he is worried about what will happen to the borough if foreclosure continues to spread unchecked. He pointed out the devastating effects of foreclosures on some communities in Michigan and Ohio.

Under the Pro Bono Foreclosure Intervention Program, Lathrop handles 40 local lawyers who are volunteers and provided their services for free to help distressed homeowners in foreclosure.

The VLP has partnered with the Brooklyn Bar Association to offer the FIP which aims to address legal needs of members of the borough who cannot afford to have representation.

VLP executive director Jeannie Costello explained that helping homeowners who are at risk of losing their properties to foreclosures is one of the hardest and demanding initiatives that the group has instituted so far.

The main responsibility of lawyers under the program is to represent distressed homeowners in court during required settlement negotiations between banks and homeowners. The foreclosure settlement conference was made mandatory under the law signed by New York Governor David Paterson.

Lathrop described the law as a strategy to prevent distressed homeowners from agreeing to foreclosures without understanding the legal implications. He pointed out that settlement conferences have created a structure that is easy for lawyers to follow. He added that the program has lawyers who are not specialists in banking or real estate but could help homeowners deal with the complex foreclosure proceedings.

Meanwhile, the foreclosure intervention program has been praised by Brooklyn judicial organizations and courts. Kings County’s administrative judge for civil matters Justice Sylvia Hinds-Radix said that the program has benefitted the community, adding that she is happy with the way it is moving forward.

Industry experts are confident that as long as judges in Brooklyn are coordinating with the program and its volunteer lawyers in an effort to end foreclosure, houses across Brooklyn will be protected.

Click here for more information on how to find Brooklyn foreclosure homes.

A dispute is brewing over Chautauqua County in New York’s 1996 tax house repossession agreement in which it repays the cities of Dunkirk and Jamestown for unpaid property tax.

In exchange for paying property taxes, the county assumes the responsibility for tax foreclosure process in the two cities, repossessing delinquent homes and selling them at auctions to recover losses.

The county’s arrangement with Dunkirk and Jamestown are the same with all the towns and villages under it. It has always been assumed that residents in the county’s towns and villages are subsidizing Dunkirk and Jamestown and that they would be having lower tax rates if it were not for these two cities and their expensive services.

This kind of tax agreement between the county and cities has been going on since 1996. Lately however, tax foreclosure auctions have failed to generate enough funds to cover what is being paid out to Dunkirk and Jamestown annually.

Some industry experts said that the failure of tax foreclosure auctions to generate enough money is due to the over-assessment of foreclosed properties. Some believed that Chautauqua County is paying Dunkirk and Jamestown more than it should for the foreclosed homes. Meanwhile, there are others who said that the county is lacking in effort to maintain those foreclosure properties, market and sell them.

Under the agreement, both cities and Chautauqua County should share any loss that may be incurred, but that has not happened. It was only this year that the county started to bill Dunkirk and Jamestown for losses at last year’s tax foreclosure. Jamestown incurred a total loss of $572,976, while Dunkirk’s amounted to around $351,778.

Legislator James Caflisch has threatened to take the issue to the court if a vote will not be made by his colleagues to end the agreement, unless both cities agreed to pay back what they owe to the county.

Caflisch believed that the tax rate in the county would be as low as $1 if it were not for the 1996 agreement. He added that ending the agreement would save his constituents a lot of money and would increase property taxes in Dunkirk and Jamestown because both cities would be forced to set aside some funds for a reserve account.

He introduced a bill that would terminate the tax house repossession agreement before it could be renewed on June 1 of this year.

Compared to other states devastated by foreclosed homes for sales, the state of New York has been faring relatively well. In the first quarter, New York is in the lower part of RealtyTrac’s foreclosure rate charts: 37th in ranking. In March, it is 36th. It had only 329 foreclosed homes for sales in March and only 1,059 foreclosed homes for sales in the first quarter.