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what happens if I walk away from my home

You might want to read this before you walk away

by Moe Bedard

8. If all else fails? There are not always easy answers. If there really is no way to make use of Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, you may indeed decide just to walk away from your mortgage and let the chips fall where they may. You have already made valiant efforts to keep up your [...]

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The short sale process is an absolute crapshoot

by Moe Bedard

Pricey distressed properties are just a slice of the overall housing market, but a growing one, according to national reports and local real estate agents. They say the pain just took longer to penetrate that sector.

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Strategic defaults growing in popularity

by Moe Bedard

“I don’t want to keep on paying when the house will never go back up to its value,” he said. “It’s better to cut our losses, get out of there and go rent.”

The number of people similarly choosing to cut their losses on their homes continues to rise. Studies estimate about one-quarter of all defaults [...]

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Las Vegas homeowners strategically defaulting by the thousands

by Moe Bedard

There’s a rumbling in Las Vegas and it’s growing louder every day.
It’s an uprising of distressed homeowners who feel betrayed by their government and frustrated by the financial system.
People are walking away from their mortgages by the thousands, making a

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California homeowners who walk away get BIG tax surprise from the state

by Moe Bedard

San Diegans who have lost their homes through foreclosure or short-sales thought they had emerged from the dark times and could start rebuilding their lives.
Then the state tax man came calling.

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Walking Away May Have Some Drawbacks

by Moe Bedard

Hold it or fold it?
It’s one thing to throw back lousy cards in a poker game and quite another to walk away from a money-losing home that you can still afford.
 
Yet, more people are doing just that as they find themselves “underwater,” with mortgage debts that exceed the worth of their properties.

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Is it moral to walk away from your underwater mortgage and unforgiving lender

by Moe Bedard

Real estate prices have dropped about 30 percent since their peak in 2006. As a result, something like ten million American homeowners owe the bank more than their houses are now worth. More than half of them are stuck with mortgages that are more than 20 percent higher than the value of their homes. They [...]

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More homeowners walking away from underwater mortgages

by Moe Bedard

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”
After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama

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Lenders start going after foreclosed homeowners for monies owed

by Moe Bedard

Former homeowners may still be on the hook if there’s a difference between what they owed on their mortgage and what the bank could sell it for at auction. And these “deficiency judgments” are ticking time bombs that can explode years after borrowers lose their homes.
It can even happen to people who got their bank [...]

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Should we be looking at it more like a stock trader? Buy low and sell high

by Moe Bedard

Most of us are guilty of it.   A mortgage is meant to be paid off eventually, right?  So why did the lenders invent interest only loans and negative amortization loans?  Clearly to take advantage of buy low and sell high.  Short term homeownership similar to the arbitrage that stock traders get rich off of.  Who [...]

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Is walking away from your mortgage now become main stream?

by Moe Bedard

Financial author Roger Lowenstein writes in the New York Times magazine over the weekend:
Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage — forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So [...]

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Should You Walk Away From Your Home?

by Moe Bedard

 White has argued that the government should stop perpetuating default “scare stories” and, indeed, should encourage borrowers to default when it’s in their economic interest. This would correct a prevailing imbalance: homeowners operate under a “powerful moral constraint” while lenders are busily trying to maximize profits. More important, it might get the system unstuck. If [...]

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Homeownership No Longer Vital for the American Dream

by Moe Bedard

If the couple’s relationship with their home was like a bad love triangle, it was clear which partner needed to go. Eighteen months after moving in, Mr. Berks and his wife took drastic action: They dumped their house (managing to break even), sold almost everything in it, loaded up their Subaru and drove to Honduras [...]

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Tit-for-tat with banks that aren’t behaving like good people

by Moe Bedard

A lot of the resistance I’ve gotten for saying that people ought to pay their debts comes from people angrily declaring that after all, the banks are vicious predators.  In some cases this is true . . . certainly, in the case of Tom Vellucci, which I debated with Felix Salmon last week, the servicer [...]

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1 in 4 Homes Under Water

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — In a sign that more foreclosures could be on the horizon, 23% of people with mortgages owe more than their home is worth, according to a report released Tuesday.
Almost 10.7 million U.S. mortgages were “underwater” as of September, said research firm First American CoreLogic.
Another 2.3 million homeowners are within 5% of [...]

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Homeowners Walking Away Becoming More Common

by Moe Bedard

“I’m walking away from my house,” says Sakson, 57, who stopped making payments about six months ago on her home in Pennington, N.J. “The bank can have it.”
What Sakson did is called a strategic default, or a voluntary foreclosure, and it’s fast becoming a major challenge to the government’s $75 billion effort to keep distressed [...]

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