Ohio Slowing Foreclosures

Posted in Foreclosure, April 7th, 2008 |

A recently given Ohio appellate court decision might give the teeth Ohio’s state government requires to halt increasing foreclosures.

Last December the attorney general of Ohio, Marc Dann was not successful with 40 foreclosure cases in the state. These could not be dismissed. However the ruling on 7 of these is still pending. Tom Winters, the first assistant secretary to the attorney general says that a ruling by the court on 20th March by the 10th District Court of Appeals , Columbus, might turn the tide in their favour. This might be applied to other similar cases.

The attorney general’s office wanted the 40 cases to be dismissed because Ohio had been named as the defendant. It is a routine process for lenders to name the state and sometimes the city as well as the county as defendants together with the name of the borrower. This is because it is presumed that there may be tax defaults. It is a sort of ‘shot gun’ approach. The motions were dismissed because the state did not have any interest in the unit. Some lenders backed out and the state was denied in other instances. But the state did not get the chance as yet to argue that the lenders could not show clearly who owned the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. The message is that they should get their cases clear before filing.

In another move the attorney general’s office is trying to see that low and modest income families get free legal help while working out a settlement with the lenders. It will be great if the pace of foreclosure filings can be slowed down so that houses are not abandoned. But so far nothing has yet happened to crow about.

In 2007 Ohio stood 7th in the national foreclosure ratings with nearly 90,000 properties in some stage of foreclosure. It calculates to one out of 56 houses being in foreclosure. The state however is keen to help the at-risk house owners. A free toll free numbers has been started as a help line. The programme has been named Save the Dream by which legal help and advice will be available to the needy. There are 8 to 10 personnel working in the office ready to directly talk with individual sufferers to see which remedial measures will suit whom. The programme officially made its debut on 1st April 2008.