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Deficiency judgment filings on the rise in South Florida

On Behalf of | Aug 8, 2014 | Foreclosures

Dyck O’Neal has been busy.

Very busy, in fact, with its frenetic activity of late being far from appreciated by hundreds of residents throughout South Florida.

Dyck O’Neal is a Texas-based debt collection enterprise that a recent media report claims is suddenly active in Florida courts owing to a change in state consumer law.

That law pertains to so-called “deficiency judgments,” pursuant to which a lender can go after a borrower following a home foreclosure for the difference between what the borrower owed and the amount the lender subsequently received following sale of the foreclosed property.

The law formerly provided for a five-year deadline in which a would-be collector could file a deficiency judgment. Legislation revising that deadline now provides for a one-year filing limit.

Dyck O’Neal seems in a hurry, with the Palm Beach Post reporting that many hundreds of judgments were recently filed against residents in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

As the paper notes, lenders have not often resorted to the remedy, deeming it unavailing in instances where distressed homeowners walking away from a property had few resources that could be collected against.

Lenders’ and collectors’ views might now be changing, given the improved personal situations of many people in recent years. The result is that some of those people, now embarked on a fresh financial start, are being revisited by lenders concerning a problem they thought had gone away long ago.

It’s “a new nightmare coming after them,” says one attorney commenting on the situation.

Persons in South Florida with questions or concerns regarding home foreclosure or deficiency judgments can receive prompt and confidential advice from a proven Miami debt relief attorney.

Source: The Palm Beach Post, “South Florida residents served with second foreclosure nightmare years after home is taken,” Kim Miller, August 6, 2014

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