Probably the biggest downside to dealing with a property sited in a judicial foreclosure state is the tedious length of the process involved. Just ask any homeowner, investor, lender OR JUDGE for that matter.

Well, the judiciary in Cuyahoga County — Ohio’s most populated county — has taken the disturbing backlog of foreclosure cases in their courts as a call to action and took it upon themselves to actually do something about it.

Reporting 2,294 properties entering some stage of foreclosure, Cuyahoga County accounted for 31 percent of all foreclosures in Ohio during October, according to the RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The county also reported the state’s highest foreclosure rate for the month with one new foreclosure filing for every 269 households — 2.4 times the state average and 3.7 times the national average — in the state with the seventh highest foreclosure rate in the country.

Being in a judicial foreclosure state, the foreclosure law in Ohio is prolonged and tedious. As set by the state supreme court, it calls for a seven month timeline for the process to be completed. But just because the process is supposed to end in seven months, that doesn’t mean the courts will adjudicate the cases in a timely manner. In fact, Cuyahoga’s court system had an 18 month backlog of foreclosure cases before the judges decided to take matters into their own hands.

Thanks to the hiring more magistrate judges, computerization of county records, and expanding the court and sheriff’s department staffs, that case backlog has now been reduced to under 12 months — down 13 percent.

At a time in the real estate cycle when various cities and counties around the country are stretching their resources looking for solutions to increasing levels of foreclosure activity, Cuyahoga is a prime example of a potential solution that may work for other judicial foreclosure states.

Still, when these solutions fall short, RealtyTrac is a source of relief that hopefully offers homeowners in Cuyahoga and other counties like it, another viable alternative to their financial distress that will allow them a way out with the potential upside of leaving with cash in their pockets and their credit rating intact.