717 more LI homes in foreclosure process
Foreclosures are up around the country and in Long Island where 717 homes started into the process. (2008) Credit: Getty Images
More than 700 mortgage borrowers fell into the foreclosure process on Long Island last month, according to a report released Thursday that also showed the pace of home repossessions slowing.
The 340 new cases in Nassau and 377 in Suffolk are not the highest in recent months, said foreclosure watcher RealtyTrac, but they trump the 537 cases in February 2010.
Some of these latest new cases may be the result of futile, government-led efforts to rescue homeowners, said one court referee, who is an attorney assigned to oversee certain aspects of a foreclosure case.
"It's like a wave produced by the failure of the efforts to keep people in houses, because it just wasn't meant to be," said Paul Costello, a Smithtown-based referee in both counties. "The people shouldn't have been in the houses in the first place, they can't come up with a workable solution to keep them there, or there isn't enough money."
But on the back end of the foreclosure process, four Nassau homes and 30 Suffolk ones were taken back by lenders last month, RealtyTrac said.
Repossessions have decreased since the 145 cases in October, when three major lenders temporarily froze their foreclosure auctions. This came after employees said they signed thousands of foreclosure-related documents monthly without verifying their accuracy. New York's chief judge then ordered lenders' attorneys to submit sworn statements saying they've taken steps to confirm details in the cases.
The foreclosure data support the projections of some experts that a housing recovery is years away.
In a push to renew expiring funding for homeowner counseling programs, the nonprofit Empire Justice Center Wednesday released data that projected a "foreclosure tsunami."
In September it pulled data on 1.5 million mortgages in the state, or about 55 percent of New York's mortgages, and found 79,739 in the foreclosure process, the report said. Payments on another 68,852 loans were at least 90 days late, which is when most lenders start foreclosure proceedings, it said.
Long Island had more than 26,079 homes in the foreclosure process last fall, with payments on another 20,985 loans at least 90 days past due, the center's figures show.
Since 2008, the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal has sent $42 million to housing nonprofits to help borrowers. A state spokeswoman said that came from federal funding that expires this year and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's proposed budget does not continue funding.
"We can't let up," said Ruhi Maker, senior attorney at the Empire nonprofit, a public interest law firm. "We are not even halfway through the foreclosure crisis, and it's gaining on us."
