NY Has Longest Home Foreclosure Process: Three Years To Foreclose On Defaulting Homeowner: Five Times As Long As Arizona: NY Home Prices Show Yearly Decline While US Shows Gains

Posted by Milton Recht:

From Bloomberg, "New York Protecting Defaulters Stalls Rebound: Mortgages" by Prashant Gopal:

The New York area was one of only two in the country to post year-over-year home price declines in the latest Case- Shiller 20-city index. Homebuyers also could lose, with the Federal Housing Finance Agency considering a fee increase to compensate Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac for doing business in New York and four other states with slow, costly foreclosures.

"New York suffers from what appears to be altruism, in that it postpones foreclosures as long as possible -- the problem is that altruism can be expensive," said Anthony B. Sanders, an economics professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “It slows down the housing market and it results in lenders being almost unwilling to lend. New buyers will pay the price for this.”***In New York it took 1,089 days on average to foreclose in the fourth quarter, the longest of any state and more than five times the pace in hard-hit Arizona, a non-judicial state that has worked through much of its backlog, according to data from RealtyTrac.