The New York State court system has announced the creation of a pilot program designed to streamline the foreclosure process and to train court personnel to mediate potential options. The following article from Newsday provides additional details on the "Residential Foreclosure Program".

State court plan aims to cut down on foreclosures

With piles of foreclosure cases landing on its doorstep, the state court system will roll out a pilot program to streamline what can be a two-year process and train court personnel to mediate options to seizures of homes.

Under the "Residential Foreclosure Program," the courts will send notices to homeowners about free legal and housing counsel and give them the option of setting up a conference with the lender, before the case is heard by the judge. The conference would be mediated by a court-appointed referee, usually an attorney, who would be trained in loan modifications and other settlement options.

Oftentimes, homeowners don't show up in court, leading to default judgments favoring the lender in 90 percent of cases.

"By flipping that process and putting the court's active involvement at the beginning of the process, we think it'll really make headway and shorten the timeframe for foreclosure by probably well over a year," said Ann Pfau, the state's chief administrative judge.

The pilot will debut in July in Queens. Once it's fine-tuned it will begin this September in Suffolk, where the number of foreclosure filings is projected to jump to 7,445 this year. It's a 269 percent increase from 2005, the highest in the state.

In Nassau, fifth in percentage increase of foreclosure filings over three years, State Supreme Court Judge Dana Winslow has been rubber stamping his foreclosure files since November. His specially-made stamp orders lenders to provide a five-year accounting of payments and other financial details on the home in question.

It's a product of his 11 years on the state bench, where he's seen homeowners and lenders give vastly different figures on how much is owed. Sometimes, the homeowner hasn't been credited accurately, and other times they don't realize that it's better to forfeit the house because they just can't afford the mortgage.

The numbers are important because the lender can still pursue the homeowner for unpaid debt if the foreclosed house is sold for less than what's owed on the mortgage.

"It concerns me enormously that somebody is going to be out on the street and there's little I can do about it," said Winslow, whose foreclosure cases have climbed from about three per month in 2005 to 30 now.

As part of the Residential Foreclosure Program, a statewide advisory committee of judges and nonjudicial experts will meet regularly to refine the courts' response to the foreclosure crisis. Judges said they hope their efforts will have a far-reaching impact.

"The recent exponential increase in foreclosure filings has far-reaching consequences displaced families, devastated neighborhoods and losses to the state economy," said Chief Judge Judith Kaye. She said the program will ultimately benefit "not only the parties directly involved, but also the neighborhoods that would otherwise be left destabilized by these vacant properties."

To view the online article, please click here.

About Safeguard
Safeguard Properties is the largest privately held field services company in the country. Located in Cleveland, Ohio and founded in 1990 by Robert Klein, Safeguard has grown from a regional preservation company with a few employees and a handful of contractors performing services in the Midwest, to a national company with over 500 employees. Safeguard is supported by a nationwide network of subcontractors able to perform any requested superintendence, preservation, and maintenance functions, as well as numerous ancillary services in the U.S., the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.