A Florida program intended to help homeowners and lenders reach a compromise in foreclosure cases has ended. The Florida Supreme Court decided Monday to shut down the 2-year-old mediation program due to a low success rate.
The program faced criticism from both lenders and borrowers who typically had already tried and failed to work out an agreement. The mediation process failed to yield any result in about 67% of cases. Homeowners believed the program was too connected to the banking industry and therefore leaned more toward their interests. Some lender representatives were also unauthorized to make changes to mortgages, making the process essentially pointless.
The program began to help address the backlog of foreclosure cases in the court system. Ideally, the program would have helped to reduce the cases being heard before a judge and alleviate some of the stress on the courts. However, the low success rate and complaints made the program unsustainable.
Cases already referred to the program will continue, but not new cases will be submitted to it.
