The most recent numbers from RealtTrac.com give Florida a "foreclosure rate heat" of hot with 1 out of every 336 housing units in foreclosure.
It takes on average 861 days - more than two years - to process a foreclosed property in Florida according to a National Public Radio report:
CHANA JOFFE-WALT, BYLINE: Eight hundred sixty-one days, think about that. That means somewhere in Florida, a homeowner stopped making payments on her house. And then, nothing happened for about 861 days. Maybe she's still in the house. Maybe she moved. Maybe she's renting it. Maybe it's full of squatters, wildlife? MARC JOSEPH: We don't know until we get the assignment. The assignment on this property came out at 2:01 in the morning. JOFFE-WALT: Marc Joseph is a real estate agent representing the lender, a bank which now owns this concrete block home on Tamiami Court. Joseph stands squinting on the lawn. He's got a digital camera strapped to his belt, ear piece blinking in his ear, and he surveys the place. No broken windows. No lights on. No cars in the driveway. Except there is a red truck parked out front on the street. So he takes a breath and moves towards the door.
Follow along with Joffe-Walt as she tours a foreclosed property with Marc Joseph who checks to see if concrete has been poured down the plumbing or electrical wiring pulled out of the walls while the Cape Coral house sat empty during foreclosure proceedings.
Floridians can expect the estimated backlog of 383,000 foreclosed properties (as of January 2012) to grow even larger over the next few years according to the Florida Bar News:
State Courts Administrator Lisa Goodner told a legislative subcommittee that she expects the backlog of cases to grow by another 380,000 cases by 2016, which is when she expects foreclosures will return to their “normal” rate of around 70,000 cases a year. For 2012-13, she predicted 165,000 foreclosure filings. “The 750,000 is what we don’t think we have the resources to handle,” she told the Senate committee. “We have put together a proposal and filed it as a supplemental budget request for your consideration. We basically reinstituted the program we had in place that the Legislature funded in 2011, that allows us to put case managers online and senior judges and case managers online to manage the backlog.”
