Foreclosure help in Suffolk County

Specific to Suffolk County

Court in Riverhead, auctions at the town hall.

Suffolk is the one county where the auction is not at the courthouse. The Supreme Court and its Foreclosure Conference Program sit at 1 Court Street in Riverhead, and the sale of a Suffolk home happens at the town hall of the town the property is in.

The Foreclosure Conference Program

Suffolk calls its settlement conference operation the Foreclosure Conference Program, based at the Riverhead courthouse with its own phone line. It uses the statewide intake, status and additional-information forms that the Chief Administrative Judge promulgated for residential foreclosure conferences, so the paperwork you see is the same statewide paperwork with a Suffolk phone number on it.

The statewide rules apply: the first conference within 60 days after proof of service is filed, good faith on both sides, no pause on the deadline to answer. Call the program if you were served and no conference notice has arrived.

Which town hall

Foreclosure auctions in Suffolk take place at the town hall of the town where the property sits, on a date and time the foreclosure referee sets and the notice of sale publishes. The court lists the town hall addresses, from Babylon in Lindenhurst to Shelter Island, and says plainly that the schedule is updated daily and subject to change, because it depends on what plaintiffs and referees report.

Since May 2023, scheduling has run through the court's Fiduciary Clerk's Office by filing a notice of sale; prior approval of the date is no longer required. For a homeowner the practical point is that the sale can be set without a separate court appearance, so the published notice and the eCourts calendar are the things to watch.

• Find the town the property is in; the town hall is the auction venue
• Search the eCourts calendar by your name or index number for a date
• Treat that date as the deadline; the sale ends the right to redeem
• Confirm with the Fiduciary Clerk's Office if the calendar and your papers disagree

Free help across a large county

Five HUD-approved housing counseling agencies are located in Suffolk County, one of the larger counts in the state, and the HOPP hotline routes you to the one nearest your town. Distances are real in Suffolk; a counselor can often work by phone and email while the paperwork comes together.