In foreclosure? Get in line

On a recent morning at the county courthouse here, retired Circuit Judge Wayne Cobb surveyed the hundreds of files stacked before him, each a foreclosure case waiting to be finalized, dismissed or delayed.

"We're jammed up," he said.

That logjam won't fade soon. Funding for Florida's "rocket docket," which allowed the state's courts to hire more staff and bring back retired judges to plow through its foreclosure backlog — but raised questions about fairness for homeowners — ended this week. That leaves fewer people and less money to tackle the state's 300,000 lingering foreclosure cases, with more on the way.

But Florida is far from alone.

Across the country, states are wrestling with mounting foreclosure backlogs, exacerbated by borrowers who continue to fall behind on their mortgages. That has left the housing market languishing long after the financial crisis, and it has hindered the nation's broader economic recovery.

"Housing has always led the way … and it's just not doing that," said Christopher Mayer, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School in New York. "It's very hard to imagine the economy's really going to pick up without housing doing more."

Skepticism about the prospects for a quick housing recovery seems warranted, given recent numbers.

According to the real estate data firm LPS Applied Analytics, more than 2 million home loans across the country are in foreclosure, and nearly 2 million more are more than 90 days delinquent. Of those borrowers who are more than three months behind on their mortgages, more than 40 percent have not made a payment in more than a year.

"What all this is saying," said Herb Blecher, an LPS senior vice president, "is that unless things change in a very big way, this is going to go on for a very long time."

In addition, the amount of time it takes to foreclose on a home — particularly in the 23 states that require court approval — has continued to grow longer, according to data from RealtyTrac.

In early 2007, it took less than six months on average to complete a foreclosure proceeding in Florida. Four years later, it takes an average of 619 days. In New York, it now takes 924 days to foreclose, up from 263. Nationwide, the time that it takes to complete a foreclosure has more than doubled, to an average of 400 days.

Altogether, banks and mortgage lenders hold more than 875,000 foreclosed homes, according to RealtyTrac. Even without the many foreclosures still in the pipeline, such a massive inventory will take more than two years to clear at the current sales rate, said RealtyTrac's communications director, Daren Blomquist.