[YankeeReb]

So lets see we walk away from our mortgage, because really since it was probably a no money down sub prime mortgage it's no skin off our back. The poor sap next door who put 20% down and struggles to keep current on his mortgage is now living next to a foreclosure. His home value now goes down more than it would have. He's still paying though but you just wiped out a good part of his net worth. Good plan.

This is why Barney Frank , Chris Dodd and anyone who supported giving mortgages to people who couldn't pay them should be wearing orange jump suits. Instead they're on TV all the time lecturing us.

[mnehring]

Socialization usually thrives when a vacuum is created by crisis. The collectivists want industry or markets to collapse so they can come in and ‘rescue’ it which really means take it over. These KOS kiddo deadbeats really just want big brother to pay for their homes.

[brytlea]

No kidding. The real villains in all of this walk away unscathed.

[Milton Miteybad]

These walkaways are essentially deciding that, even though they have pledged via their mortgage or deed of trust that they will eat the loss occasioned by a decrease in the value of the real estate (yeah, mortgage instruments essentially say that, as a general rule), that they, the borrowers, will turn around and make the deficit not their own problem, but that of the lender, who fronted the purchase money in the first place. From where I'm standing, it's merely grand theft going under another name.

And articles such these attempt to excuse this type of theft not just on an individual basis, but on a societal scale as well. It's now fashionable, it appears, to stiff the lender (in essence, steal the purchase money and stick them for the loss) just because it's now inconvenient for the borrower to live up to his promises.

Of course, the taxpayer ends up eating the loss in the long run, since the lender probably gets bailed out.

[FightThePower!]

“So lets see we walk away from our mortgage, because really since it was probably a no money down sub prime mortgage it’s no skin off our back. The poor sap next door who put 20% down and struggles to keep current on his mortgage is now living next to a foreclosure. His home value now goes down more than it would have. He’s still paying though but you just wiped out a good part of his net worth. Good plan. “

Either way the house is worth less, the price of a house doens’t fall because the neighbor sells his house for less. The sale just registers the fact that housing prices have already fallen. BTW the housing isn’t going to recover to the previous highs for many years. Nor should they. It took all kinds of mortgage fraud to pump the market up to those levels. We should let them correct to their natural level which is probably at least 25% lower than they are now.

[Darnright]

>His home value now goes down more than it would have. He's still paying though but you just wiped out a good part of his net worth. Good plan.<

If this behavior catches on nationwide, whole swatches of the US will mirror Detroit in the near future.