Florida Bank Slapped by Florida Appeals Court: No Evidence of Fair Market Value Means Bank's Deficiency Judgment Nixed

Florida Condos: Public Domain Image

For those of you who aren't big fans of Florida banks who foreclose on people's homes, here is a good story for you....

The Second District Court of Appeal in Florida tossed out the huge deficiency judgment that Liberty Bank had on some condos recently, in a big way.  

Apparently the bank didn't bother to get appraisals of the condos at the time of the foreclosure sale, they just figured that the appraisals they had that were six months old at the time were good enough.

The appellate judges agreed with the condo owners that nope, those January appraisals weren't good enough to use to calculate fair market value of the property in the following June, and sent the whole thing back to the trial court for more number crunching.

Liberty Bank, by the way, foreclosed on 9 condos.  Liberty Bank bought all of them at the foreclosure sale for $800,100 (that's less than $100K per condo).  Then Liberty Bank got a deficiency judgment of approximately $2.7 million after selling off 7 of the 9 condos after the foreclosure. 

Anyone else interested to see what amount the new appraisals value these condos?

For all the details on this case, including the link to the opinion, read About Florida Law's post today.