ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - For Alex Pemberton and his fiancée, Susan Reboyras, foreclosure has been a life raft. A choice they made to try and save their St. Petersburg home and business.
At the same time their St. Petersburg house was being foreclosed on last summer, their restoration business was falling flat. “We had a business. We had to make a choice. We can either save our business and lose our house and keep ourselves fed. And possibly recover through all this time,” said Mr. Pemberton.
Alex Gregg knows the Pemberton’s dilemma all too well. In 2005, Gregg bought his first home in Lutz at the height of the real estate boom at the age of 23. “I really fell in love with it. I liked it, it was a really good deal,” said Gregg.
His single story home had become his ideal bachelor pad. Several cars in the driveway, a pool table in the game room, and a pool in the backyard. But when Alex's paint contracting business dried up two years ago, like the Pembertons, he got the dreaded notice.
“When I got the letter, my heart sunk,” he recalls.
His home was facing foreclosure. That was January 2009. And today he's still living in the home the bank wants back. You see, foreclosure is something homeowners like Alex and the Pembertons are in no hurry to get out of.
“The longer I’m in foreclosure, the longer I’m able to save and look towards the future, and after my foreclosure,” says Gregg, now 28.
As Florida drowns in some of the nation's highest foreclosure rates, some homeowners in foreclosure like Alex Gregg and the Pembertons are finding a way to stick it back to the bank. They are hiring a foreclosure defense attorneys like Mark Stopa, who, for a $1500 fee, advises them to stop paying their mortgage and stay put. All while Stopa fights the case in court.
Most of the time it takes a year, sometimes two years to clear it up -- and it's all legal.
“If you hire a lawyer such as myself to defend a case, then the process can take longer because a lawyer can force a bank to prove its case,” says Mr. Stopa, who runs his own legal practice and the website stayinmyhome.com.
The game of "force me out if you can" tends to get tied up in court delays and paperwork while homeowners are allowed to live rent free.
Lenders say it's simply a stall tactic. Whatever you call it, Alex says it buys him time to take the money that would have gone to his mortgage payment, and instead, put himself through college. The Pembertons use it to pay for advertising their business, which they say is the only thing they will have left, once they lose their home. Alex Pemberton says his mortgage payment that now goes towards advertising has rescued his business. He is hoping to eventually put his profits into the back payments he owes the lender. A move that could save his home if the gamble pays off.
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