Florida halts foreclosures for 45 days...one of highest rates in the country.

TALLAHASSEE — Facing one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday called on lending institutions to hold off on new foreclosures for at least 45 days.

Flanked by representatives from the banking community, Crist urged lenders to voluntarily stop new foreclosure filings and cautioned troubled borrowers to contact their mortgage holder to work out repayment options.

Crist has no legal authority to prevent lenders from calling in home mortgages but said Floridians deserve a break. Lenders would benefit by reducing the number of owners who can’t keep their loans.

He also stressed that any moratorium should target primary homeowners while letting investors deal with the consequences of their decisions.

“This is to help people who really need help,” Crist told reporters. “This is not for somebody who bought a bunch of condos in South Florida in the (speculative) market.”

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink suggested Friday that the state's Republican leaders are in denial about the dire economy and they should call a special legislative session now to deal with the impact on the state budget.
Sink, speaking to the Council of 100 in Palm Beach, said a possible $1-billion gap in state funding demands attention now, not later.

"I do not see any way we can afford to wait until March to deal with a potential $1-billion-plus shortfall in this budget year," Sink, the state's only elected Democratic executive, said in an interview later. "That's just an impossible situation."

Either the governor or the two leaders of the Legislature call special sessions, and so far Gov. Charlie Crist and new leaders of the House and Senate, all Republicans, are taking a wait-and-see approach. And Sink's criticism comes as Crist is reaching the midpoint of his term.

Some homeowners say they are still receiving foreclosure notices, even from banks that have said they would halt the process until the New Year.

Over the past month several large financial institutions have sworn to halt foreclosures during the holiday season. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) started the ball rolling on Halloween with an announcement saying it would "not put any additional loans into the foreclosure process" (BusinessWeek.com, 10/31/08) for 90 days. The bank said it hopes to keep 400,000 borrowers in their homes by modifying terms of their loans, opening more mortgage counseling centers, and reaching out to borrowers in distress.

Yet a BusinessWeek.com reader who lives in Washington State says he started receiving notices asking him to call the "loss mitigation" department at Chase on Nov. 25. But that wasn't all, says the homeowner, who wrote into BusinessWeek and asked that his name not be used.

"Foreclosure is scary as hell," he writes. "They send strange men to your house after dark on Saturday night to hand-deliver copies of documents from a metal lockbox. Every day brings more certified mail. The mailman has to knock and wait for us to sign things—three different certified copies of everything, one to 'occupant' and one to my wife and I."