Florida State Foreclosure Defense Attorneys
Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, meaning that the foreclosure process occurs under the supervision of the courts. Before the bank can take your home, they must file a complaint in court and serve you with a notice of the proceedings. This is your opportunity to show the judge that the attempted foreclosure is wrongful and should not be permitted. At Charlip Law Group, LC, you will find an experienced Miami foreclosure defense attorney who is skilled and knowledgeable in the variety of claims and defenses you may have available to fight a foreclosure in Florida. Below is a quick look at some of the most common state law claims that can be used to contest a foreclosure in Florida courts.
Title and Possession Claims
It may seem obvious, but in order for the lender to have the right to foreclose on your property, it must actually hold the mortgage or note that it claims you are in arrears on. In today’s modern world of finance, however, this is not so simple. Your mortgage may have been securitized, which means it was bundled together with countless other mortgages to create something called a mortgage-backed security, which may have then been sold many times over to ever larger pools of investors. Your mortgage may even have been chopped up into pieces so that different securities with different levels of risk tolerance could be created. Does your bank still hold the note, or do they even know who does?
If your mortgage has been securitized, it may be hard for the original lender to produce the note and prove that it actually has a claim to the title of your home as security for the loan it made. In a suit to quiet title, if the bank cannot prove that it holds legal title to the property, it can be prevented from asserting a claim to the title through foreclosure or other means.
Fraud and Predatory Lending
Agents, brokers and lenders all have a fiduciary responsibility to the borrower. This means they are in a position of trust and are required to deal with you honestly, in good faith, and in your best interests. If one of these parties breached its fiduciary duty to you, you may have options regarding the loan. In addition, the Florida Fair Lending Act prohibits a long list of activities which are considered unfair, deceptive or fraudulent in the making of a loan. These prohibitions include activities such as making a loan that the bank knows the borrower does not qualify for or cannot meet, or failing to disclose important terms of the loan, such as variable interest rates or balloon payments. If you were the victim of fraud or predatory lending regarding your home mortgage, you may be able to renegotiate more favorable loan terms or get out of the loan altogether.
Thorough, Comprehensive Foreclosure Defense in Miami and beyond
At Charlip Law Group, LC, we take every step necessary to protect your interests, like recording a lis pendens on the property when a quiet title suit or other action is underway. Lenders have been known to sell homes to third parties, even while a title dispute was pending in court. If the new buyers purchase the home without any notice of a problem with the title, it may be difficult to get the home back from them, even if you were successful in your suit against the lender. Recording a lis pendens with the property puts any potential buyer on notice that an action is pending regarding title to the property. Contact our experienced Miami & Florida foreclosure defense attorneys for more information.
When you retain the assistance of Charlip Law Group, LC to defend your home against foreclosure, we will thoroughly investigate all of your options under state and federal law and fight to make sure you are not the victim of a wrongful foreclosure. In Miami and throughout Florida,
call Charlip Law Group, LC at 305-354-9313.
