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Viewpoints: Jay Parker, CEO, Douglas Elliman Florida, Miami

by James McClister

Jay-Parker

Jay Parker is the CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida working in Miami.

Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before. This week, we spoke with Jay Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman’s Florida brokerage.

Miami Agent (MA): The latest foreclosure numbers from Black Knight Financial Services, which we reported on last week, identify Florida as having one of the longest foreclosure timelines in the country. In their research, Black Knight found that, on average, foreclosures in the state take 1,246 days, or roughly 3.4 years, to reach completion. Why does Florida’s process so lengthy, and how do you think it has hurt or hindered, if at all, the state’s recovery?

Jay Parker (JP): In regards to the judicial process, I can’t speak to why it’s taking longer in Florida compared to other judicial states. The processes are very similar, but my non-legal conclusion, which comes from my years as an attorney actually dealing with these foreclosures, is that we live in the sunshine state for shady people. What we experienced in the surge of our real estate market leading up to 2007 was a lot of unqualified investors who would buy a property, which then quickly dropped in value, and when the property eventually fell into foreclosure, the investor would pull out all the stops in delaying the process. Eventually congestion builds.

The reason these people were pulling out all the stops was because: A) And this is a more understandable situation, You have someone living in their home, where their family is, and they’re doing everything they can to keep a roof over their heads. And B) You have an investment property, which is being occupied by a tenant who’s paying X amount of dollars for rent each month, so they can turn to a lawyer, and whether this is ethical or not, who’ll say that if you pay me X amount of dollars per month, I can delay this for five years.

Banks don’t typically hire reputable law firms to take care of their foreclosures. They tend to go for first year associates, many of whom are not litigation experts, and, akin to their experience, they tend to make a lot of silly mistake. Banks think of foreclosures as a train, it’s not paper pushing, it’s just getting people on and getting people off. Because of this, if you bring in even a slightly sophisticated defense attorney, he or she can throw up all kinds of obstacles to the success of the processes, whether it be the failure to notify on a timely basis or the dates that are written on a notice letter that are inconsistent with the timing of the process. All of these things create a delay, but that combined with the fact that our court systems have been completely overloaded, extends what would typically be a 30 to 60 day delay to be, easily, six months to get back on the court roster.

So, how does it affect the market? Today, truthfully, I don’t think the effects are that significant. The distressed market is much less of a component today that it was in 2007 and 2008. There are less short sales, less REOs, more and more it’s traditional transactions. And even the pipeline of foreclosures hitting the market has slowed down tremendously.

The only thing I could see compromising the balance would be a massive number of properties coming out of foreclosures at one time. But I know most of the major banks are intentionally throttling the flow of foreclosed properties to avoid saturating the market.

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Comments

  • Reputable Attorney, Reputable firm says:

    Mr. Parker, your comment that ‘Banks don’t typically hire reputable law firms to take care of their foreclosures,’ is inuslting to those of us who actually practice law, with ‘reputable firms’ who provide services to our country’s lending institutions. More likely it’s real estate companies like yours who don’t typically hire good lawyers as their execs– based on ‘their experience.’

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