MANATEE — The first one was a five-acre ranchette that has been a Myakka City family’s home for more than two decades.
The final one was a vacant, 2.9-acre commercial parcel and 18 boat slips at a Palmetto condominium complex that fell victim to the local real-estate bust.
In between: thousands of Manatee County homes, condo units and other properties that also fell into foreclosure in 2008, a year in which the flood of foreclosures swelled into a tsunami.
Lenders initiated 5,592 foreclosure proceedings in Manatee County Circuit Court last year, according to the Manatee County Clerk of Court’s office. That’s an average of 15 a day, a pace that shattered 2007’s then-record of 2,620 filings in less than six months.
The new foreclosure record surprised few in the local mortgage and real-estate industries.
“I hate to use the cliche, but ’08 really was the perfect storm,” said “Mortgage” Mike Koebel of MetLife, a 23 1/2-year veteran of the mortgage business. “It was bad all around.”
A mix of falling home values, a depressed housing market and a souring economy drove last year’s spike in home foreclosures, he said.
But the foreclosure flood spread well beyond single-family homes and condos last year, also ensnaring a well-known Royal Lipizzan horse ranch in Myakka City; a proposed 1,484-home project in northern Manatee; a Palmetto condo building; and a half-built residential subdivision off Upper Manatee River Road, among others.
Several well-known local names also faced foreclosure or the threat of it in 2008. Among them: state Sen. Mike Bennett, Manatee County Commissioner Gwen Brown, former state Rep. Mark Ogles and Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston.
They, like thousands of others in Manatee, fell into foreclosure or nearly did so despite federal, state and local efforts to stem the surge.
Last summer, Congress created a $300 million program that lets primary homeowners avoid foreclosure by refinancing their mortgages into more-affordable government-backed loans. Officials said it would help as many as 400,000 homeowners nationwide, but only 357 have signed up for the program since its October inception, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
Lenders also largely ignored a 45-day holiday moratorium on foreclosure filings and auctions that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced in early December. In Manatee, lenders filed 441 foreclosure suits in December — just 10 fewer than November and 140 more than in December 2007.
A local initiative — requiring lenders to offer to meet with borrowers to discuss ways to avoid foreclosing on primary homes — started on Dec. 1. It’s too early to gauge what impact the measure is having, but it could go statewide: A proposed bill would allow other judicial circuits in Florida to implement similar programs on a two-year pilot basis.
But another local initiative that also took effect Dec. 1 — requiring lenders’ attorneys to electronically filed foreclosure suits — has helped ease court clerks’ workloads, said Ruth Schay, supervisor of the clerk’s civil and family divisions.
No longer are clerks facing the daily task of scanning hundreds of pages of foreclosure filings, which often arrived in boxes that “you could literally build a wall with,” she said.
“It’s been a huge blessing,” Schay said of the e-filing requirement.
Opinions vary on whether the foreclosure surge will continue or abate in 2009.
“I’d like to believe the worst is over, but I still have a sick feeling that we’ll continue to see a lot more in the first, second and third quarters of this year,” Koebel said.
Matthew Augustyniak, owner/broker of Horizon Realty in Bradenton, is more optimistic.
He expects foreclosures to drop because lenders have become more willing to agree to a short sale, in which the property is sold for less than the outstanding mortgage, with the lender absorbing the loss.
Augustyniak also said the wave of defaults on three-year, adjustable-rate loans taken out during the housing boom’s 2005 peak crested last year.
“We’ve gone through the worst of it,” he said.
Duane Marsteller, transportation/growth and development reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630.
E-Mail
Print
Quick Job Search
@Nyx.replyAnswerText@