More Floridians face the threat of losing their home

Statewide, mortgage delinquencies are at their highest point in nearly a decade.

[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer] Jeanette Cowdery and her son, Fernando, narrowly avoided foreclosure, but it took the help of an interest-free loan from the state. "I just always thought I could catch up," she says.

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Jeanette Cowdery recalls her brush with foreclosure through a haze, the way others might describe a car crash.

She sighs. She squints. She wipes the sweat from her brow with a crumpled paper towel. Slowly, the details emerge:

The Christmas gifts she had to buy for her 7-year-old son. The car payments, the medical bills, and the $642 mortgage payment she didn't make for three months.

The moment, two days after Christmas, at the Talk America call center in Palm Harbor when Cowdery was called in by her boss. She thought she was getting a routine evaluation or even a raise.

Instead she was let go.

Then there was the letter from Wells Fargo in January saying that if she didn't pay $2,106 by February 13, the bank would foreclose on the 3-bedroom stucco bungalow that she's lovingly decorated in pastels.

"I knew it was coming," said Cowdery, 43. "I just always thought I could catch up."

With the help of an interest-free loan from the state, Cowdery narrowly avoided foreclosure.

But she is among a large crowd of Floridians who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments and face the harrowing possibility of losing their homes.

By September of last year, 5.76 percent of Florida's mortgage holders were at least 30 days late making payments, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's the highest delinquency rate in nearly a decade for the state, and higher than the national average of 4.87 percent. The crunch in making the monthly mortgage payment did not affect only the poor.

After a decade of economic prosperity and freer spending by both the wealthy and the poor, "most people are living close to the edge," said Mark Spence, a New Port Richey attorney.

With salary and commissions, Cowdery took home about $2,000 in pay each month from her job. She holds two graduate degrees, and her house carries a total assessed value of nearly $94,000. Many other bay area residents have not been as lucky as Cowdery as the national recession hit home.

Banks foreclosed on 10,708 homes throughout the Tampa Bay area in 2001, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year. The sharpest increases -- 19 percent -- occurred in Pasco and Citrus counties.

Pasco doesn't depend on tourism or industry as much as Pinellas or Hillsborough counties or Orlando. Still, 50,000 Pasco residents commute out of the county to work every day, so the county felt a ripple effect from the downturn in surrounding areas.

More rural areas of the state, such as Citrus, "have not been participating in the (economic) growth of the rest of the area," said Ken Wieand director of the Center for Economic Development Research at the University of South Florida. "There are fewer people working there, and the people getting educations are leaving those counties."

Personal and business bankruptcy filings in the region that stretches from Tampa to Fort Myers hit 24,132 last year, up 20 percent from the previous year, the biggest increase in five years.

National experts take the figures in stride.

"We've seen delinquencies rise, and that always happens in a recession -- when unemployment goes up," said Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. "We're not alarmed. We're quite a ways from the peak (6 percent) we hit in 1985, during the oil crisis and when the housing market tanked."

The foreclosure trend may not trouble the experts, but it keeps Russ Napier on the run every day.

As a process server, Napier has been delivering the bad news since 1988, shortly after he retired from the Tampa Police Department. Along the way, he's had to contend with German shepherds, guys with guns, mysterious smells, messes and threats. In recent months he's seen the jump in foreclosure filings from the front lines; he's delivering about 15 notices a week, up substantially from a year ago.

"This year there's definitely been an increase," he said.

Despite his experience, Napier hasn't become numb to jobs such as the one he recently had to do at a $117,605 carnation-pink home in southern Pasco.

The home is in a neatly kept neighborhood in one of the county's fastest growing corners. New Lincoln Town Cars and Jeeps fill the driveways, and white herons graze in front yards.

But the resident on his list -- a tanned, blond grandmother who declined to be identified for this report -- is five months behind on mortgage payments.

Napier hands her the summons and explains that she has 20 days to file a written notice to the county. He tells her she can hire a lawyer or get free legal help through Bay Area Legal Services.

Her bottom lip starts to quiver as she gets the drift.

She apologizes in broken English, and tells Napier about her husband's heart surgery and how they fell behind. Through teary eyes, she asks for forgiveness and even asks him inside.

"I'm just a process server ma'am," he says. "That's as far as I can guide you."

Napier takes a patient breath, lays out her options again and again and offers his business card.

She continues to sob and explain: When her son wanted to buy a house, she and her husband helped with the down payment. When her daughter needed help, they gave her a loan.

Napier wishes her good luck.

"Those are the hardest ones," he says. "The majority of them are just good people trying to make a living. They want to work it out, but they don't know if they can."

Napier has seen just about every way that someone can end up in foreclosure. There are divorces, where one spouse expects the other to pay.

There are the people who rent their homes out, take the rent money and don't pay the mortgage.

There are many elderly, widowed homeowners, who can't afford to make ends meet on a single Social Security check.

Some homes have "for sale" signs staked in the yard, the owners hoping to sell before the bank catches up with them.

"But 99 percent of the people who haven't paid their mortgage know that this is bound to happen sooner or later," he said.

Cowdery spends many of her days sorting through the piles she's accumulated in recent months: shoeboxes filled with open bills and the paperwork from three months of fruitless job hunting stuffed in a plastic Office Depot bag.

Though she has a bachelor's degree, a master's in business administration and an associate degree in medical records, she is applying for jobs as a probation officer, a school teacher and a para-professional in the public schools.

"I just don't think private industry is secure," she said. "I'd rather be in a service position, helping other people. I just want to find a secure, stable job."

She tries to focus these days not just on what she wants for the future, but the home she's been able to keep through these hard times.

"The house is the only thing that I have right now that you can't take away," she said. "Everything else, I don't care -- everything except a roof over my head."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright