>>I can’t fault someone who refuses to sacrifice their family’s current and future financial security and decides to walk away from mortgage rather than over pay for a place to live every month for the next 10 or 20 years.<<
Oh really? So if you buy a car, chose not to have insurance, then it’s stolen, you shouldn’t pay for the car, right?
Cause paying off that loan is a sacrifice for the family security.
Seriously?!?
I’m not talking about walking out on 2 years of car payments. I know people living in modest homes with 20 years left on the mortgage who’s property value has declined by 70%, putting them 100K under water. The market is not coming back to fix that type of problem. Better to walk away, the bank gets the house back, and start over. The bank puts the recourse in the mortgage contract specifically for that scenario. They entered the contract as willingly as the buyer, and share the risk. I don’t know why some people come down so hard on folks who make a rational decision to walk away. I’m current on my mortgage right now, and I like my house, but with my neighborhood in decline, and being far underwater, my only way out is to walk away. It may tip that way before long.