Initiated in 2009, this foreclosure case may finally be drawing to a close

1 Widgeon reports that a short sale is “pending”. That should mean that the lender has agreed to a proposed purchase price (last ask, $1.and because short sales are subject to no contingencies, this long, drawn-out drama will, probably, conclude soon.

I have complete sympathy for homeowners who run into financial disaster, and were I in such a situation I would fight tooth and claw to keep my family in our home. That said, there should probably be a better way to handle foreclosures than the one Connecticut has devised.

Foreclosures in California and Florida take about six months to complete. That speed certainly inflicts great hardship on defaulting borrowers, but it also clears up the housing market: those states with speedy foreclosure processes recovered from the 2008 debacle quickly, those who don’t, didn’t.

This particular foreclosure began in 2009. Two-hundred-plus motions later, judgements of foreclosure entered and reopened, the house is finally being sold off, allowing the lender’s assignee to recover part of the money due. I don’t hold any particular sympathy for the plaintiff here: it probably paid pennies on the dollar to whatever entity first extended the loan, but still and all, nine years to complete a pretty simple matter: money loaned, secured by a mortgage, loan defaulted on. Our civil court docket is clogged with cases strung out by both plaintiffs and defendants, depending, with the result that litigants with legitimate grievances must wait years to have them addressed. “Justice decayed is justice denied:”, some wise man once declared, and I agree.