Web site puts face on foreclosure

The Florida Association of Realtors is hoping to evoke change in public policy regarding foreclosures by putting a human face on the people who wind up losing their homes.

Face of Foreclosure is a Web site the agency has started in order to collect information from people caught up in foreclosure.

The Realtor group hopes that the information collected on the site at www.faceofforeclosure.com will “provide the building blocks for strong advocacy and ultimately, good public policy as it relates to the housing market in all its facets,” according to a statement from the agency.

The site asks questions ranging from what type and size of home a person owned, to how lenders were to deal with and what factors contributed to being foreclosed on.

Lenders filed 3,193 foreclosure actions in Manatee County Circuit Court in the first six months of 2009 — more than half the record number of 5,592 foreclosures filed last year.

May Aston, a local Realtor with RE/MAX Alliance Group in Bradenton who concentrates on foreclosed properties, thinks the idea is a good one that may help prevent the ongoing foreclosure crisis from happening again.

“We still have foreclosures coming in, and I really do think if the data will help fix the system then it’s never too late,” Aston said. “Maybe it will prevent similar mistakes from being made in the future or maybe it will help people now who are trying to avoid foreclosure.”

But Kathy Marlowe, a local Realtor with Keller Williams, did not share the same sentiment.

“I feel like we’re way behind,” Marlowe said. “We should have been collecting data like two years ago.”

Marlowe thought the project would do little to help those in foreclosure or about to go through it.

“How are you going to help them avoid it when they owe $300,000 on a mortgage on a home that’s worth only $175,000?” Marlowe asked. “Why would they even want to stay in that house?”

Marla Martin, a spokeswoman with the Florida Association of Realtors, said the study will be valuable from the standpoint of providing more information than the standard reporting of foreclosure numbers services like RealtyTrac provide.

“They don’t tell you a lot about who’s going through it,” Martin said. “It seems like it’s better to have all the information you can gather about the problem itself if you want to find a workable solution or at least some answers that can help solve it.”

Florida Association of Realtor officials said the agency had received a $97,000 grant from the National Association of Realtors to assist with foreclosure prevention and promote foreclosure prevention awareness.

The group also has purchased statewide radio spots to educate the public about the initiative.

Greg Owens, a Realtor with Keller Williams Realty in Palmetto, said the site will likely do some good, particular if the information gathered is used to lobby legislators for public policy changes.

“I feel that to give this a human face may change public policy in the future in order to avoid this situation again,” Owens said. “I believe we could have avoided these massive failures and kept a lot of these people in their homes. And frankly, that is going to take a lot of changes to avoid this happening in the future.”