From The Trenches — The State of Foreclosures In Florida

Hi, this is foreclosure defense attorney Roy Oppenheim, from the trenches. I wanna give everyone a quick overview of what’s going on in the world of foreclosure defense, and fortunately, I was at a seminar with a number of prominent judges from Dade and Broward County this past Friday. And, of course, I won’t be mention any names, but I’m gonna give you some key takeaway points that I think are important for me to share with you all.

Number one, sometimes people call me and they say, “Are you still doing foreclosure defense?” Of course, we’re still doing foreclosure defense, and foreclosure defense is not going away. And the most important thing I want everyone to remember, before I even get to the details, is that unless you stand your ground and unless you stay in your home and you fight, you’re going to lose.

And once you start and engage the process with the banks in a foreclosure defense, various options will open up to you, and we’ve talked about this before, but I must reiterate. I gotta reiterate again that we continue to do foreclosure defense and we will always be doing foreclosure defense as long as the banks are trying to illegally throw people out of their homes.

And number one, in Dade County, there are still 60,000 foreclosure cases on the books and the courts will do whatever they possibly can to get them off the books. So that’s number one. Number two, in Broward we got 43,000 cases, and the attitude is rather similar there, that they’re going to try and move these cases, which immediately creates an opportunity as well as a problem.

One of the problems is, is that the courts will frequently make both parties go to trial when they’re not ready. And so, if the bank’s not ready, that’s a big problem for the banks. Because as long as the banks aren’t ready and they don’t have their witnesses, their documents, their notaries, their assignments, their notes, and all their other things that they need under the rules of civil procedure to get a case proven for a foreclosure case, they will lose and the case will get dismissed.

Of course, the flip-side is that if your lawyers aren’t prepared, they’re not gonna be able to prove that the bank isn’t prepared. So, it’s a two-edged sword, but from our perspective it is good to force the bank’s hand, because in many, many cases, the banks will not be ready as is proven to the fact that when we get ready for trial, many times, the night of trial, literally at the eve of trial, we look at a motion to dismiss from the bank, because basically they’re not going to have their bank witness, their affidavits aren’t right, they don’t have the folks who have serviced the loans with the proper documentation to support the foreclose, and so that’s really very, very important.

The other thing is foreclosures are up. Eighteen hundred new foreclosures were filed just from Broward County last month, which a month over month or a year over year, is a substantial increase. One of the increases that we’re going to see, and just your hold hats on here, are the zombie foreclosures. Those are the David Stern files that were dismissed by the courts or that were dismissed for whatever other reasons, those cases have now been transferred, they’ve come out of storage, they’ve been delivered to other attorneys, and in fact they are going to be re-brought.

And so, if you are one of those people, do not sit idle but contact a foreclosure defense attorney at that time, whether it’s us or anyone else, hopefully us, so that we can assist you. The other thing is, we’re noticing that some of the judges just don’t understand the la, and they still think that they’re in 2008. And while some of the judges claim that the rules of civil procedure are not suspended in foreclosure cases, we all know that they were in 2008 and 2009. And it wasn’t until guys like me and other folks came to the fore, wrote our articles, went to the press and did what we did, that we forced the judiciary to comply with the rules of law.

We expect that the judiciary will continue to follow the rules of law, not withstanding the fact that openly a number of judges said that there are no defenses, no viable, no valid defenses that a homeowner has. That is not true, that is categorically wrong, and frankly, I am disappointed that any judge would make such a statement openly.

Having said that, we will do what we have to do and we will appeal where we have to appeal to preserve the integrity of the legal system, the judicial system and our constitution in the United States. Roy Oppenheim, from the trenches. Have a great weekend.