November 8, 2009
TAVARES - Lake County set another dubious economic mark last month.
Circuit court employees logged the county's 4,802nd foreclosure filing of the year Oct. 22, surpassing the record-bad total compiled in 2008, said Barbara Shivers, who tracks mortgage foreclosures for Clerk of Courts Neil Kelly.
The tally means Lake will have a fourth consecutive record-bad year for foreclosures.
The clerk's office counted 4,965 residential and commercial-property foreclosures through Oct. 31, a figure that is 25 percent higher than the total accumulated through the first 10 months of 2008. The county had 4,801 foreclosures in 2008, 2,080 in 2007 and 878 in 2006, all of which established new records for a calendar year.
A silver lining in the bad news is that the rate of increase has finally slowed.
Foreclosures have not only dragged down property values but also tax revenues for Lake County government, which reduced its workforce by 90 employees during the past 12 months and imposed monthly furloughs. Lake cities and other taxing bodies have been similarly affected.
Circuit Judge Don Briggs, administrative judge in Lake County, said recently the onslaught of foreclosures has prompted him to investigate the possibility of requiring mediation in foreclosure cases, which dominate the civil dockets.
Statewide, Florida courts are trying to cope with 290,000 foreclosure cases.
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