Mortgage Holders Walk Away From Their Homes

An estimated 9 million American households, or 10.3 percent of all single-family homes, owe more than their home is worth, according to Moody’s Economy.com. By comparison, 4.8 percent of home loans were in foreclosure or delinquent by 60 days or more at the end of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

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clipped from www.nytimes.com “Let me also emphasize that any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in late March. “Washington cannot create any new mortgage program to induce these speculators to continue to own these homes, unless someone else foots the bill.” Jon Madux, a founder of the site YouWalkAway.com, which helps borrowers leave their homes, said a majority of the site’s clients default because of financial hardships. The Mortgage Bankers Association estimated that the owners of 18 percent of the homes in foreclosure as of September 2007 did not live in those properties. Investors “are going to default right away because they have negative equity,” said Robert Van Order, an adjunct professor of finance at the University of Michigan. “But that’s different from people who moved into the house.”