Three years into the foreclosure epidemic, desperate condominium and homeowner associations are now beginning to employ aggressive law firms and collection agencies in a new tactic aimed at recovering delinquent fees.
The debt collectors working for these associations are asking the courts to use more extreme measures. In a few cases, they have gotten judges to help them freeze and confiscate the bank account of a former owner.
Florida is gliding quietly into a new and potentially painful part of the boom-bust cycle, where stacked-up “deficiency judgments”; for unpaid condo fees and unsatisfied mortgages could come back to haunt past owners. Many of them thought they had escaped further costs when they handed their home over to their lender.