The day after the Bank of America said it would resume pursuing defaulting borrowers in the 23 states where foreclosures are overseen by the courts, judges in Florida said they were expecting even more challenges to foreclosures from defaulting homeowners, according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by David Streitfeld.

The article quoted Patrick Madigan, an assistant attorney general in Iowa, as stating that "There has been an attempt by some of the major servicers to indicate there are no problems," adding that "We're not at the end of this process. We're at the beginning."

"All 50 state attorneys general," the article said, "have joined in an investigation into lenders' foreclosure processes, which in at least some cases appear to have been so sloppy that legal requirements went by the wayside. The lenders maintain the errors involved mere technicalities, while lawyers for defaulting homeowners say they are symptomatic of a foreclosure system out of control. The Obama administration, which declined last week to push for a national freeze on foreclosures, emphasized Tuesday that it was committed to holding accountable any bank that had violated the law. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said that the administration was 'strongly supporting the investigation by the state attorneys general' while noting that the Federal Housing Administration and Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force have undertaken their own investigation."

Thomas McGrady, chief judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Clearwater, Florida, told The Times it was still an open question for him and other judges whether they would accept amended documents from Bank of America or force the lender to refile its cases.

Bank of America, the country's largest lender, announced it was unfreezing foreclosures in the 23 states less than three weeks after it froze them and said that its review found its process "satisfactory enough to file new affidavits in 102,000 pending cases starting next week," the article said.

However, the article quoted Adam J. Levitin, an associate professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, as stating that "The banks have dragged their feet and taken forever to do loan modifications, yet within less than two weeks they have managed to review hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases," adding that "It is simply not credible."

In an article in the same edition of the newspaper, Binyamin Appelbaum wrote that questions are rising over the oversight of foreclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "the wards of Washington that own more than half the nation's mortgages" and "are the dominant customers of the industry that has grown up to remove people from homes they cannot afford."

"They did not notice or act to prevent what former employees of some loan servicers and law firms now describe as a pervasive disregard for the legal requirements to seize a home," the article said, adding that "Critics say the emphasis on speed may have blinded Fannie and Freddie to the accumulation of evidence over the last several years that servicers and law firms were cutting corners."

Spokesmen for Fannie and Freddie said that the companies did watch servicers and law firms carefully, but that they ultimately relied on those firms to follow the law.

In another article in the same edition of The Times, Nelson D. Schwartz wrote that "the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and...other large investors are pressing Bank of America to buy back a portion of the $47 billion in mortgages it originated, most of which were assembled by Countrywide Financial just before the real estate boom turned to bust...." Countrywide, which specialized in subprime mortgages, was acquired by Bank of America in July 2008.