Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

Well, we didn’t get a holiday from foreclosures during Christmas week, but it looks like most of the mortgage bankers’ lawyers decided to slack off on their final paperwork.

Only 81 sheriff’s deeds were filed with the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s Office last week (December 24 through December 28).

Here’s who filed five or more of them:

Department of HUD (15)
Bank of New York (12)
US Bank (9)
Deutsche Bank (7)
Wells Fargo (5)
Federal National Mortgage Assn (5)
Citibank (5)

(Previous week.)

Unfortunately, the “foreclosure bar” was taking no holiday break across the street in the Justice Center.

At the Christmas Eve Sheriff’s sale, 163 properties actually went up for auction and 138 were sold. (The other 24 were “not sold for want of bidders”, meaning that nobody offered the minimum two-thirds of their appraised value).

This morning, the Sheriff’s Office is capping off 2007 with 158 more properties on the auction block.

And moving right along toward another busy year, the folks upstairs at Common Pleas Court took in 269 new foreclosure filings last week.

But we don’t need a Foreclosure Holiday because, you know, Tom Moyer’s plan will get them all into mediation, once the judges and the Bar Association get all the details worked out. Which will be, as the PD assures us, “as soon as possible.”

Happy New Year, everybody.

P.S. Since Chief Justice Moyer announced his foreclosure mediation initiative on November 8, there have been 1,297 additional sheriff’s deeds (i.e. finalized foreclosures) filed with the Cuyahoga County Recorder, and 2,251 new foreclosure cases filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Just in case you’re counting.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 7:02 am and is filed under Foreclosure crisis, Poor Cleveland, Shrinking city. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.