7601 East Treasure Drive

First Equitable Realty III is filing a $15.8 million foreclosure lawsuit against 72 units in North Bay Village’s Grand View Palace Condominium. The suit names three companies financially involved with the apartments, located at 7601 East Treasure Drive: Coastal Condos, Victory Consulting Group and Phalanx.

Costal Condos acquired the condo units with a previous mortgage from First Equitable Realty in 2008. [more]

WSG Development’s proposed extension of Golden Sands Canyon Ranch hotel at 6901 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach is under threat of seizure after a Lehman Brothers affiliate filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the developer, according to the South Florida Business Journal. The original 1951 Golden sands hotel was foreclosed upon in 2009 and the adjacent site, which was bought in 2005 by WSG for $19 million, will most likely suffer the same fate. The property was being prepared for a new 20-story hotel when construction stopped. The lawsuit claims $26 million in outstanding principle loans and an additional $10 million in interest. [SFBJ]

AIG affiliate, Western National Life Insurance Co. seized 355,000 square feet of office space last week in Deerfield Beach and Oakland Park, according to the South Florida Business Journal. The two office parks were won in foreclosure actions against AEW Capital Management. The two office parks include Hillsboro Executive Center North, which is located at 800 Fairway Drive, and Commercial Place, which is at 3230 Commercial Boulevard. The properties were mortgaged for approximately $27.5 million and $26 million, respectively. [more]

Roman Pino, a Greenacres drywall hanger, has become a source of trepidation for banks, according to the Palm Beach Post. The Florida Supreme Court will soon review a lawsuit by Pino that disputes whether a bank can avoid punishment for filing fraudulent documents via voluntary dismissal, a decision that could have serious implications for lenders. [more]

Bank of America has alerted 5,000 homeowners that they may qualify for reduced loans as a part of a settlement of foreclosure abuses, according to the New York Daily News. The reduction could apply to as many as 200,000 customers by the bank’s estimation. [more]

The rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans in the Miami-Miami-Beach metropolitan area was 17.57 percent in February, a drop of 1.56 percentage points compared to the same period in 2011, according to data from CoreLogic. The rate remains significantly higher than the national foreclosure rate of 3.41 percent. The mortgage delinquency rate also decreased in the Miami metro area, with 24.92 percent of mortgage loans being 90 days or more delinquent, compared to 27.07 percent for the same period last year. — Alexander Britell

Long favored in Florida, short sales for the first time are more popular than sales out of foreclosure in the U.S., according to data from Lender Processing Services cited by Bloomberg News. As lenders increasingly favor the faster and more lucrative process, short sales accounted for 23.9 percent of home sales in January, while foreclosures represented 19.7 percent of sales. A year earlier, 16.3 percent of deals were short sales, while 24.9 percent were foreclosures. [more]

In another symbol of the faulty paperwork America’s largest lenders used to file for foreclosures, Bank of America has sued itself 11 times in Palm Beach County foreclosure cases since late March, the Huffington Post reported.

The suits stem from Bank of America servicing mortgages on behalf of other investors, a practice undertaken by most big banks that led to the so-called robo-signing scandal. As the servicer, the bank processes payments, negotiates with borrowers and handles foreclosure proceedings without actually owning the loan. [more]

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

Thanks to “extraordinary market conditions” the Federal Reserve officially approved banks’ strategy to rent out foreclosed homes yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Outside those conditions, lenders have to demonstrate a legitimate effort to sell repossessed properties. But recognizing the state of the rental market and the sales market, the Fed and banks have been strategizing for months on how to rent out the bevy of foreclosures backlogging the market. [more]

Initial default notices in South Florida rose by 51 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to a report from brokerage and consultancy Condo Vultures. There were more than 10,000 initial notices of default in the first 90 days of this year, compared to around 7,000 in the same period in 2011. [more]