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Foreclosure Defense Florida

A Family in Foreclosure Beats The Bank For 12 Years

When you read the story, understand this…

The Palm Harbor man hasn’t paid a cent on his home since 2002, back when gas cost $1.61 a gallon, Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq and Kelly Clarkson was the first American Idol. Now, 12 years later, the world has moved on. Stenstrom has not.

As of this week, he and his family were still in the house even as a bank pressed ahead with efforts to evict them.

“I understand it looks bad,” Stenstrom says of his decade-plus of payment-free living. “But it was wholly legal.”

Stenstrom, 62, has benefited from a federal law that automatically stops all actions by creditors, including banks trying to foreclose, when a person declares bankruptcy. Between 2002 and last year, Stenstrom and his wife filed a total of 18 bankruptcy petitions to keep their house from being sold at public auction.

MORE HERE

There is certainly much, much more to this story. The bank’s lawyers did not aggressively monitor this property or the bankruptcy filings…. if they did they could have gotten relief from the bankruptcy stay and could have proceeded to execute their judgment long, long ago. The fact that a homeowner without an attorney is able to use the legal system to his advantage in the face of the unlimited resources of the banks is a testament to a legal system that in fact works for even the least among us. There should be not one bit of pity for the banks….. if their lawyers cannot do the job or they choose not to do so… why should this man be criticized? The story illustrates a larger point…a point that is not in dispute anymore…. the banks cannot (or will not) properly mange the assets that are under their control. The “problems” in foreclosure are not problems created by courts or by defendants (for the most part) the problems are the result of out of control and extraordinarily poor decision making by banks whose incompetence is nurtured by the federal and state governments.