Consumer-Bankruptcy Rate Soars To Record Highs In Orlando Area
The number of personal bankruptcies in Central Florida have skyrocketed, reaching higher levels than ever before, despite the 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code that Congress approved to limit the amount of people seeking protection under bankruptcy laws.
Last year, due to the slow economy and high unemployment, personal bankruptcies in the Orlando area broke the record set a few years earlier when the new, much stricter legislation made it more difficult for people to eliminate their debts. This year, it looks like the area will break its own bankruptcy record, fueled in large part by the unfavorable real estate market.
According to a report from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Orlando, the number of bankruptcies filed in the area increased by almost 60 percent to a total of 20,305 last year, topping the 2005 record number of 17,770 filings when consumers were desperate to file bankruptcy before the new law took effect.
Of the three regions that are part of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida, bankruptcies filed in Orlando increased at a faster rate than those filed in Tampa, where the number of bankruptcies increased by 42 percent, or Jacksonville, where they increased by 32 percent.
Almost 1.5 million U.S. consumers filed for bankruptcy in 2009 - an increase of 32 percent over 2008. However, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute and National Bankruptcy Research Center, the nationwide total last year was still 30 percent lower than the 2005 record of almost 2.1 million bankruptcies.
In Central Florida, over 7,700 bankruptcy petitions have been filed in Orlando’s bankruptcy court alone, scoring 26 percent higher than the same period in 2009.
As the economy takes its tolls on households, almost 97 percent of the bankruptcies currently filed in the Orlando area are filed by individuals.
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