In the foreclosure crisis, South Florida has been among the hardest hit areas in the country. In order to help protect the rights of homeowners, every foreclosure in Florida is required to go through the court system. Because Florida has been deeply affect by the housing and foreclosure crisis, the court system's ability to handle foreclosures has been stretched very thin. As of February, there was a backlog of more than 320,000 foreclosure cases in the court system.

To address the backlog, the Florida Supreme Court created a foreclosure mediation program in 2009. However, a recent report indicates that the results of this program have been disappointing.

The Office of the State Courts Administrator released its first statewide report by the on the mediation program and the report indicates that only about 4 percent of the 57,909 foreclosures that were referred to mediation resulted in an agreement between the bank and the homeowner. The success rate improved to 27 percent if only referrals that actually resulted in mediation are included.

In Miami-Dade County, 14,372 foreclosures were sent to mediation. Of those referrals, only 2,396 mediations actually happened. An agreement was reached in only 700 cases. In Broward County, the numbers followed a similar pattern. In Broward County, 5,024 foreclosures were referred to mediation. Only 793 mediations actually happened and agreements were only reached in 132 cases.

The report indicates that the biggest problem with the program involved reaching the mediation table. In many cases, borrowers could not be reached. Across Florida, only 41 percent of borrowers were successfully reached.

Source: The Miami Herald, "Slow start for Florida's foreclosure mediation program," Toluse Olorunnipa, 4/27/2011