The foreclosure numbers before the housing collapse and Great Recession are returning in Florida. Homeowners may jump for joy, but the court system isn’t too enthused, as they’re revenue has decreased for over ten years.
In general, revenue for courts across the board is $19 million less than what the original forecast, $280.5 million. On Monday, 16 economists held a conference to estimate revenue, in hopes to find a “new normal” revenue. Economic advisers for the governor, along with legislature and court systems revised their budget forecast even less than before. It’s expected that drops in revenue will signify past the year 2018. The “new normal” estimate was used in order to calculate their state budget proposals for 2016.
Florida’s population has been growing; however, case filings have been going down, putting court systems in tough situations, as 10% of case filings have dropped. In the recession, 5,500 foreclosures were made per month, with an estimation of 31,000-29,150 per year. These numbers have returned current day.
After much discussion on how what the foreclosure rates will look like long-term, a “new normal” was finally found. Estimates were revised to 65,000 foreclosures in the year 2016, 62,500 for 2017, and 59,000 cases for 2018-2010.
A problem also arrived in the traffic court system, where revenue is also dropping from the $12.4 million forecast to $700,000 in traffic citations, while red light camera violations are down to $1.3 million from the forecast $14.2. As numbers were crunched, a new estimate of $20.8 million (from $30.8 million) for the years 2015-2016 in traffic citations, and $31 million (from $33.5 million) in red light violations, was calculated.
Who would have thought that a drop in the foreclosure rate, and a drop in traffic citations would have any negative backlash at all?