Florida courts will no longer require mandatory foreclosure mediation after the Florida Supreme Court announced it will close down the two-year-old program yesterday. Citing reports the program didn’t work as well as hoped and that the court system could no longer justify the cost, Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady said new foreclosure cases will no longer be referred to mediation.
The mandatory program, established in 2009, was created to ease pressure on the court system and speed up the foreclosure process. However, according to many Florida homeowners facing foreclosure during its tenure, lenders did not take the process seriously and the program did little to help them avoid the inevitable.
Continue Reading Florida Supreme Court Ends Mandatory Foreclosure Mediation Program
Tags: foreclosures, real estate, sellers
The following is a brief review of the requirements of the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act. Known as FIRPTA, the act requires that a buyer of real property in the United States must withhold 10% of the gross sales price and send it to the IRS if the seller is a “foreign person.” A foreign person is described as a non-resident alien or a foreign corporation that has not made an election to be treated as a domestic corporation. It does not include a resident alien that holds a “green card.”
Once again, a Florida Appeals Court has upheld the current standard for seller disclosure requirements that apply to Florida real estate transactions. Citing the landmark disclosure case, Johnson vs. Davis, the appeal court found that the law requires a seller to “actually” know about a problem in order to be held liable for a material defect.
The following is a review of the real estate tax profiles for the Southwest Florida counties of Charlotte, Collier, Lee and Sarasota. The information comes from a report completed by Florida TaxWatch that reviewed local government taxing and spending policies and practices for the year 2010.
