Homeowners like Nicole West now threaten to slow that system, Florida’s so-called rocket docket, to a crawl. West, who has been fighting to save her Jensen Beach house from foreclosure, has leveled a new allegation in her three-year battle: the entire process is based on fraud.
West said her case is rife with the kind of flawed mortgage documents that have caused lenders including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to stop the process of foreclosures and evictions across the country. The banks said they are investigating homeowner charges like West’s that signatures were forged and documents were backdated.
“It’s not right,” said West, 40, who lives about an hour’s drive north of West Palm Beach. “It’s like lying to the judge. It’s like lying about what’s really going on.”
You can view the documents for this case at the Martin County Clerk of Court’s Public Records web page. I did find it odd that the Mortgage would be assigned after the filing of a Lis Pendens.
Jensen Beach is just south of us. Martin and Saint Lucie Counties have been very hard hit by the crisis. Much of the steady, higher paying work here was construction based.
Martin County has always been a place for upper middle class professionals and the housing stock reflects that. You will not find new developments geared for working class residents. The county has a no growth policy which I believe results in only very expensive housing being built. There are older areas with less expensive housing but often these are in less than desirable areas.
So the Wests if they want to stay in the area also have the challenge of finding an affordable place to live should they lose their current home. With landlords doing credit checks as a matter of routine even finding a reasonbly priced rental would be difficult. The current mess not only makes it hard to meet present obligations it makes it hard to start fresh.