Revision of foreclosure law sends new filings into free-fall

An official count of foreclosures shows that the number of new cases filed statewide in July plummeted after enactment of the latest overhaul to Hawaii’s foreclosure law.

The state Judiciary reported this week that 75 new cases were filed last month, down from a monthly average of 355 over the prior 12 months.

The number of foreclosures in Hawaii had already dropped after a May 2011 overhaul of the state’s foreclosure law. In the months immediately preceding Act 48, new foreclosure cases were running at around 500 per month and dropped to about 200 when the new law took effect. Industry representatives said Act 48 exposed lenders to unfair risks and led them to file all new cases in court instead of employ an out-of-court process that had been used for the vast majority of cases.

Nevertheless, the number of foreclosures had been gradually climbing since June 2011, reaching 458 in June of this year. Then the most recent change to the foreclosure law, Act 182, took effect on June 28, and the number dropped again.

July was the first full month of foreclosure activity under Act 182, which among other things established requirements that attorneys who are handling foreclosure cases for lenders affirm the accuracy of all documents.

Earlier this year some local attorneys predicted that the new requirement would cause a slowdown or temporary halt in new cases while they figured out how to deal with the affirmation requirement.

Some of those attorneys now expect that the latest change in the law will force lenders to reform sloppy practices and actually lead to more efficient case processing and higher case volumes in the months to come.

Time will tell if that prediction proves true and, if so, whether case volumes approach anywhere near the level they were at before the May 2011 overhaul.

Earlier this month real estate research firm RealtyTrac published a report that said there were 158 new foreclosure cases filed in July, a bit down from 215 a year earlier but up from 73 in June, suggesting that the latest change to Hawaii foreclosure law didn’t have much of a dampening effect.

However, RealtyTrac recently disclosed that its count is imprecise because new court foreclosure cases are typically entered into the California-based company’s database a week or two after cases are filed.

Also, RealtyTrac doesn’t count new cases if a foreclosure was previously started out of court under the nonjudicial process. (Act 48 canceled all pending nonjudicial foreclosure cases.)

Based on past RealtyTrac figures that counted nonjudicial and judicial foreclosures, the number of new cases in Hawaii is estimated to have been as high as around 1,200 in several months leading up to October 2010, when some of the nation’s biggest lenders cut back on filing new cases when improper documentation problems such as "robo-signing" were exposed.

Hawaii’s economy and housing market have significantly improved over the past year, so some observers say the worst has passed for foreclosure troubles facing local homeowners.

According to the latest survey by the national Mortgage Bankers Association, 2 percent of Hawaii home loans were at least 90 days delinquent but not in foreclosure during the three months ended June 30. That is down from 2.7 percent in the same quarter last year.