Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years -- but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home.
Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years.
In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home.
They're not alone.
Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years.
These cases can go on and on. Nationwide, it takes an average of 565 days to foreclose on borrowers in default from their first missed payments to the final auction. In New York, the average is 800 days and in Florida, where the "robo-signing" issue is particularly combative, it's 807.
If they want to fight evictions hard, borrowers can remain in their homes even longer while their cases are being worked through.
The Segals have been doing that -- in court. They bought their home in 2003 with an adjustable rate mortgage. After a few years, their monthly payments tripled to $3,000, just as their home-inspection business was cratering.
The Segals want the bank to modify the mortgage so payments are affordable, and they think the court will agree that their lender put them into a toxic loan.
"The evidence will show that we were defrauded," said Jill Segal.
by Les Christie CNNMoney.com June 9, 2011
Posts
