I copied this from Florida Statute 180.135…

180.135?Utility services; refusal or discontinuance of services for nonpayment of service charges by former occupant of rental unit prohibited; unpaid service charges of former occupant not to be basis for lien against rental property, exception.—

Florida’s Legislative Budget Commission allocated $2.77 million to improve Everglades pump stations in a short-term benefit package to improve the health of waterways harmed by releases from Lake Okeechobee.

To protect Lake Okeechobee and the integrity of its earth dam, Florida has directed excess water – notably in the summer rainy seasons – to the two rivers that flow east and west. However, the man-made increase in polluted water has impacted the environment and homeowners who live along the rivers. It has caused a problem for homeowners and those Realtors who work as property managers for units along the water.

According to William Poteet with Poteet Properties Inc. in Naples, the onslaught of polluted water from the redirected flow pushes the saltwater farther downstream and turns “our view from clear, pristine water to a milky brown mixture. It’s just not a pretty picture.”

In addition to pump station improvements, the money will also be used to build a channel to aid Florida Everglades’ water flow across the Tamiami Trail in Miami-Dade County that now acts as a de facto dam.

Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, chairs the Legislative Budget Commission, which is comprised of lawmakers from the House and Senate. Negron says the projects will allow the communities east and west of the lake “to mitigate the damage to the lagoons and estuaries.” The projects are “all designed to store water on mostly public lands; to have additional pumping so that the water goes south.” He says there is “a small amount of money to cut a little area in the Tamiami Trail so more water can go south.”

Florida Realtors backs environmental changes that bring a better balance to the Everglades river system. Audubon Florida Legislative Director Mary Jean Yon also supported the allocation. “If there is a surprise (to this announcement), it’s that they were able to get things going this quickly,” Yon says.

Water sent from Lake Okeechobee into the rivers has reportedly killed oysters and sea grass, and caused a toxic algae outbreak that has forced Martin County health officials to warn residents against coming into contact with the water.

The money, to come from the Water Management Lands Trust Fund, was among a number of short-term fixes by Negron’s Senate Select Committee on the Indian River Lagoon and Lake Okeechobee Basin, which held an afternoon-long workshop in Stuart on Aug. 22.

“It’s going to be a tremendous boost,” says Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, that will help correct “some of the things we’ve done in Florida over the last 150 years.”

Fla. foreclosure starts down 65% year-to-year

Florida foreclosures dropped dramatically in RealtyTrac’s latest report for August. Overall foreclosure activity dropped 43 percent, and foreclosure starts – homes that received a first notice – dropped 54 percent year-to-year.

Nationally, RealtyTrac reports that national foreclosure filings – default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions – decreased 2 percent from the previous month and 34 percent year-to-year, the 35th consecutive month where foreclosure activity has decreased on an annual basis. One in every 1,019 U.S. housing units had some kind of foreclosure filing activity during the month.

Some experts say the Florida drop relates, at least in part, to a bill passed during the 2013 session of the Florida Legislature to ease the court burden of foreclosures in the state. St. Petersburg foreclosure attorney Matthew Weidner tells the Tampa Tribune that mortgage servicers and banks now have more trouble proving that they own a mortgage, which the legislation requires.

That could mean lenders are doing more prep work before filing foreclosure paperwork, which would impact the foreclosure numbers. However, RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist says it’s too early to know the impact of Florida’s new foreclosure law.

In addition, Florida is not the only state to see a dramatic drop in foreclosure numbers.

Report findings

• Florida is no longer No. 1 for its foreclosure rate, slipping to the No. 2 spot behind Nevada. Ohio, Maryland and Delaware round out the top five.

• Florida cities accounted for six of the 10 highest metropolitan foreclosure rates – but that’s down from nine of the top 10 the previous month.

• Some Florida cities, while still in the top 20, logged fewer foreclosures year-to-year. Florida cities in the top 20 include: 1) Port St. Lucie (foreclosures up 218% year-to-year), 2) Jacksonville (down 2.2%), 4) Miami (down 18%), 5) Ocala (up 42%), 6) Tampa-St. Petersburg (down 11.64%), 9) Orlando-Kissimmee (down 27%), 14) Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville (down 33%), 15) Naples-Marco Island (up 17%) and 18) Cape Coral (down 41%).

• REO activity increased in Florida 48 percent to a seven-month high. Nationally, REO activity increased month-to-month in 26 states and was up year-to-year in 23 states.

• The year-to-year decrease in Florida foreclosure activity was driven primarily by a 65 percent decrease in foreclosure starts, dropping those to the lowest level since RealtyTrac began issuing its report at the state level in April 2005.

• Foreclosure auctions in Florida, however, increased 39 percent from a year ago.

HB 87, commonly known as the “Florida Fair Foreclosure Act,” took effect on July 1, 2013. This new Act applies to all pending foreclosure cases as well as cases filed on or after July 1, 2013.

One of the express purposes of the new foreclosure law is to speed up the foreclosure process. Speeding up the foreclosure process means that there will be less time for homeowners to work out a modification, explore loss mitigation alternatives, complete short sales and prepare for a transition in housing. The complexities of the new detailed procedures and expedited time frames under the Act will be difficult for pro-se homeowners to navigate. To many consumer advocates, the law is anything but fair to Florida homeowners.

The Act made many substantive and procedural changes to the foreclosure landscape in Florida. Some of the most significant changes include: (1) expansions to the law providing an expedited process for foreclosure which can now be invoked by any lienholder, including mortgage holders and homeowner and condominium associations;

(2) a provision under which the Plaintiff can request the Court require the borrower, on non-owner occupied residential properties, to make mortgage the payments set forth on the Note into the registry of the Court during the process in order to defend the case;

(3) a provision dictating the finality of a foreclosure judgments in certain circumstances which limits relief to monetary damages; and

(4) specific heightened pleading requirements as to the standing of the party filing the foreclosure and actual physical possession of the Note, verified under oath, which must be set forth in all mortgage foreclosure complaints filed on or after July 1, 2013.

Perhaps most significantly, the Act reduced the time in which a foreclosing lender can seek a deficiency judgment from five years to one year, reaffirmed the longstanding law that a deficiency judgment is within the discretion of the Court, and sets the measure of a possible deficiency judgment (on owner occupied residential properties) to the difference between what is owed and the fair market value of the property, a standard which now expressly applies both in foreclosures and short sales. This provision of the Act is beneficial to homeowners doing short sales as previously, the Lenders who refused to waive deficiency rights in a short sale, asserted they were entitled to the difference between what they netted from the sale (after payment of closing costs and real estate commissions) and what was owed. In essence, parties who sought to mitigate damages by doing a short sale were penalized, but under the new law, they are not, which is definitely a positive. The full text of HB 87 can be found at www.myfloridahouse.gov.

Florida leads nation in cash-only home sales

Florida led the nation last month with what one expert called an “astounding” rate of all-cash home sales: 66 percent, a new report shows.

Investor groups, international buyers, landlords and those in the market for vacation homes are fueling a cash-only market that has virtually shut out entry-level homebuyers, who can’t get approved for mortgages.

Lake Mary real-estate agent Tom O’Brien said he recently represented a single mother employed by Valencia College who wanted to buy a house near downtown Sanford.

“The seller said he wanted to hold out for a cash buyer instead of waiting for her FHA mortgage to get approved,” O’Brien said Wednesday. “The first-time buyers are the ones who are really struggling; they’re scraping together every nickel, and they’re competing with the cash buyers.”

The influx of cash continues to grow in one of the country’s most volatile states for real estate: Cash sales made up 57 percent of Florida’s home sales a year ago and 61 percent of all sales in June of this year, compared with the 66 percent reported in July, according to the report released today by the real estate research company RealtyTrac Inc.

“That’s astounding,” RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said. Nationwide, only Nevada (64 percent) and Maine (60 percent) came even close to Florida’s tidal wave of cash-only deals.

Among Florida’s metropolitan areas, Brevard County had the highest rate of cash deals: Seven out of every 10 house sales last month went for cash. Next in line was the giant metro area that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach; 69 percent of all sales there were all-cash deals.

One factor tipping the scales in cash buyers’ favor has been the tightening of mortgage requirements following the easy-lending era that preceded the 2007-09 recession.

“The home-loan mortgage market has utterly dried up,” said Mark Soskin, an associate professor of economics in the University of Central Florida’s business college. “The market requires buyers and sellers, [but] if you want to buy a house, you have to have cash.”

Private-equity firms and institutional buyers have been actively picking up Florida’s lower-priced houses, fixing them up, and renting them for some time already, but those buyers are moving on to other states, RealtyTrac’s report shows. During July, institutional buyers drove 22 percent of the home sales in Georgia, 16 percent in Nevada, 15 percent in Arizona and 14 percent in Florida.

The following is a statement by National Association of Realtors® President Gary Thomas:”The re-proposed Qualified Residential Mortgage rule announced this morning is a victory for homebuyers and the future of homeownership in this country. This version of the QRM rule will give creditworthy buyers access to safe and affordable loan products without overly burdensome downpayment requirements. “The new standards, which align with those applied to Qualified Mortgages, are stringent enough to protect consumers from unscrupulous lending practices while also creating new opportunities for private capital to reestablish itself as part of a robust and competitive mortgage market.”Realtors® were among the most vocal opponents of the first QRM rule proposed in April 2011 because it would have denied millions of creditworthy Americans access to the lowest cost and safest mortgages. We applaud the regulators for removing the 20 percent downpayment requirement and for adopting reasonable credit and debt-to-income standards.”In addition to the main proposal that we support today, regulators introduced an unfavorable alternative that would require buyers to put 30 percent down to qualify for a QRM loan, a restrictive measure that dramatically favors the wealthy. Research shows that it would take the average American more than 25 years to save enough money to buy a modest home with a 30 percent downpayment.