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Few places epitomized the foreclosure crisis like the Fort Myers area during the real estate bust.
Jeff Tumbarello, the director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investor's Association, reminded us recently how bad it was.
At the end of April, there were 8,850 active foreclosures moving through the Lee County court system. That's about 500 more than there were at the same time last year.
But consider this: In April 2009, there were 24,335 active foreclosure cases in Lee County, Tumbarello says.
This context is important because there is a second, smaller wave of foreclosures making its way through the system today. In April, lenders filed 656 foreclosure actions compared with 375 in April 2011.
But Tumbarello says that's because foreclosure actions slowed dramatically after regulators challenged the foreclosure process and so-called “robo-signing” documentation, so we're now in catch-up mode. It's not going to be near the size of the last wave, he says.
The top three lenders filing foreclosures in April were Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Bank of New York.
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