The Default Line

Foreclosures keep rising and auction workers keep reading
By Diane Dietz - The Register-Guard- May 12, 2009

Lacy Nash, with Oregon Process Service, often reads foreclosure sale postponements to herself and someone at an adjacent desk in the entrance to the Lane County Courthouse. Legally, foreclosure sales or sale postponements must be read somewhere in the county.

The precise moment that Lane County residents lose their houses to foreclosure — or get a formal reprieve — comes with considerable anti-climax.

On Tuesday, for example, at 11 a.m., attorney Robert Russell stepped into the hallway on the eighth floor of the Citizens Building in downtown Eugene, stood with his left hand in the pocket of his crisply pleated slacks and read a piece of paper.

The foreclosure auction of Meyer’s General Store in Blue River and the attached apartment where the owner lives would be “postponed indefinitely,” Russell said.

If a reporter hadn’t been there to witness the reading, Russell would have been alone. But he said he’d read the legal paperwork out loud anyway. “Yeah, I’m supposed to,” he said.

Two hours later, in the lobby of the Lane County Court House, Lacey Nash, a young woman with a pierced cheek and a nose ring, took a seat at a Formica table and read the fate of three Eugene houses.

This time, each auction was formally postponed until dates in June and July.

Nash, an employee with Oregon Process Services, said her company either conducts the auctions or postpones the auctions at the same spot at the court house as many as three times each weekday — at 10 a.m., at 11 a.m. and at 1 p.m.

“There’s definitely a lot,” Nash said. “Just this morning we got at least 15 (notices) letting people know their houses are being sold.”

Read the rest of the story:
THE DEFAULT LINE

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