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What Works in Foreclosure Dispute Resolution?

Jennifer Shack, November 13th, 2013

With foreclosure dispute resolution programs proliferating around the country, the natural question to ask is, “Do they work?” That’s what former RSI staff member Heather Scheiwe Kulp and I set out to determine. The answer, as discussed in our article, “Foreclosure Dispute Resolution Programs: Do They Work?” (Probate and Property, November/December 2013), is that some do and some don’t. Some are achieving what they set out to achieve, at least to some extent. Others aren’t.  What the programs want to achieve varies, though with much overlap. Goals include keeping homeowners in their homes, helping homeowners and lenders come to mutually agreeable resolution, improving judicial efficiency, and so on.

When we looked at what factors might influence the effectiveness of a particular program, we found four characteristics of programs that achieve their goals. These were having clear goals and objectives from the start, good document exchange management, active case management by the neutrals and the inclusion of supplemental services like housing counseling. Check out our article for more details.

RSI has a number of other resources on foreclosure dispute resolution, which can be found in the Special Topics section of CourtADR.org.

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One Response to “What Works in Foreclosure Dispute Resolution?”

  1. Kent Lawrence says:

    Ah, would that those “in the system” [foreclosure/workout administrators, Judges, and direct repeat players – counsel, in house administrators on the creditor side and those (less concentrated or of size) on the homeowner’s side, or dealing with homeowners, such as advisors of what a particular borrower’s situation is personally and the market value verse debt of their home] would read and learn from this distilled experiential program knowledge. Maybe they would be amenable to modifying their programs – or installing “best practices” [however defined] in new programs.

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