The New York foreclosure system reached a crisis point in late 2010.
Banks were filing more foreclosure cases than the courts could resolve, creating a backlog in the state that could take more than a decade to unwind. Many homeowners entered court without legal representation, and banks kept piling on the cases before the robo-signing scandal brought operations to a standstill.
In February, pending foreclosure cases in the system reached roughly 80,000, according to a paper published by the state's Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman. Each property a bank repossessed in March spent an average 900 days stalled in the system – roughly two and a half years and the longest timeline in the country, according to RealtyTrac.
But the state's administrative board of high-level judges implemented an affirmation rule in October 2010 to alleviate the situation. Banking attorneys had to sign an affidavit vouching for the accuracy of the records in a foreclosure, forcing these lawyers to go back and check reams of documentation before filing a case.
The rule worked. The courts were freed up to begin moving through the backlog, but no one knows for sure how long the progress will last.
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