New York State Regulator Proposes Foreclosure Law Change

New York’s top bank regulator on Tuesday proposed amending state law to shorten the foreclosure process for homes with delinquent mortgages.

Department of Financial Services Superintendent Ben Lawsky, addressing mortgage bankers, said New York’s process averages 900 days from the date of filing to the sale of the property. That’s nearly a year longer than the national average, according to the department.

“The chronic nature of New York’s foreclosure problem is not a result of a new wave of defaulting homeowners,” Lawsky said. “Rather, the long tail of the crisis is due, in significant part, to problems in the way our state’s broken judicial foreclosure process is currently applied.”

In the foreclosure crisis from the 2008 recession and burst housing bubble, New York law was amended to require a settlement conference between the lender and homeowner to “negotiate in good faith.” Lawsky said those conferences are frequently plagued by delays that worsen homeowners’ prospects of keeping their residences as interest  and penalties mount. It also hurts lenders and investors whose investments lose value, he said.

He proposed specifying in law what “good faith” means, and that it should include showing up at the conference on time with full authority to settle the case and the paperwork required by the court. He also called for sanctions on either side that fails to do that.

“For a lender or servicer who fails to negotiate in good faith, the minimum sanction should be a tolling of the accumulation of any interest, costs and fees during any delays caused by the plaintiff,” he said. “This tolling can help borrowers qualify for a home-saving loan modification or secure a short-sale, a big improvement over the current situation where the odds are continually stacked against the borrower as time goes by.”

“For a borrower who fails to negotiate in good faith, the judge could terminate the settlement conference, which, after all, exists for the borrower’s benefit,” he said.

A report from his Department of Financial Services released Tuesday shows a record 115,000 settlement conferences conducted last year.

The report concluded that the longest delays occur between the last settlement conference and entry of a foreclosure judgment, averaging 343 days in upstate New York and 430 days downstate.

This article appeared in print on page 31 of the May 20th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.