Pending Foreclosures Falling Through Cracks Lead To Rent-Free Living For Some Central Florida Homeowners

In Orlando, Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports:

• A few blocks from West Colonial Drive in Orlando is a weathered, split-level house that has been in foreclosure since 2007. The longtime owner has lived there for nearly five years without making a payment.



• It's not the only Central Florida house that has idled in foreclosure longer than some kindergartners have been alive. Scattered across Metro Orlando, where 15 percent of all mortgaged homes have received a foreclosure notice in recent years, are more than 20 houses that have fallen through the cracks of local courts and mortgage companies for almost half a decade, according to records provided to the Orlando Sentinel by the real-estate-research company RealtyTrac Inc.



• As these long-term foreclosures flounder between the homeowners and the banks that hold the mortgages, front-lawn weeds grow taller, lenders lose revenue, neighbors' property values decline, and courts get further backlogged. The homeowners live rent-free but end up with credit records so ruined that few landlords will risk renting to them should they be evicted from their properties.

For more, see Some Orlando-area homes stuck for years in foreclosure limbo.