After 6 sets of blueprints, 300 pounds of nails, wood boards, steel re-bar welded together for a concrete frame, 2×4’s, 2×6’s and fiber board. After the plumbing and drainage, electricity and insulation, PVC pipe, faucets, water heaters, toilets, sinks, breaker boxes, wires, outlets, switches, fixtures and rolls of insulation, water proof glue and sealant and so on.
This thing that is stressing you out of your mind… This thing that is consuming many of your sleepless nights…
After all, it’s just a house.
A chair is still a chair, even when there’s no one sittin’ there
But a chair is not a house and a house is not a home
When there’s no one there to hold you tight
And no one there you can kiss goodnightA room is still a room, even when there’s nothin’ there but gloom
But a room is not a house and a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart…-Burt Bacharach – Grammy winning songwriter (for those who don’t know)
Sometimes things are just things.
A burnt down house can be rebuilt. A wrecked car can be repaired. A credit score can recover. Embarrassment can be forgotten.
Lost time cannot be regained. Hurt relationships may not fully recover. Missed moments can be lost forever. Broken families may never mend.
The things that really matter in this life are not material things that can be replaced, they are the things that we sometimes take for granted.
Going deeper in debt? Losing sleep? Fighting? Stressing out?
After all, it’s just a house.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I think this is so true, a house is just a house. So many people are bankrupting their future to try and hold on to what they have……Its just a house, there will be another someday.
Certain things just do not work out sometime. If you are having trouble maing payments, do not risk the well being of yout family. Just walk away…
The banks do not care about you, they are interested in the bottom line profit. They want to make sure that they can pay for their Maseratis and Porsches and they want you to go into debt so that they do not have to alter their lifestyle.
Credit (and credit scoring) is going to have to change if the banks are going to lend in the future. This is a depression not a recession. Forget a stupid credit score that the Bank gives you…. Think about it, you were given that score so that you can get into debt, what a stupid system.
There is over 650,000 people per month losing their jobs. Do you think the banks dont realize that they need these “slaves” to pay them residual incomes in the form of debts. They will lend to these people which ever way they can, they need the cashflow lifeblood to stay alive
Do the right thing, protect your future and stop living like a slave.
Walk away and get over it already. Make saure the bank produces the note, and not a certificate of the note…..Watch those sly foreclosing attorneys!!!
What is the stigma against walking away?? Your pride gets shattered, well I would rather that than not be able to take care of myself. And your pride heals quickly!
If you get crushed in stocks, you can sell at a loss and get out
With a house, it is not as liquid when the market is bad. So are you supposed to hold on until “the bitter end”? Do not be a fool!
Do not wait for the “margin call” to come and lose everything.
Some people have an issue the walking away, I say we live in the real world and you have to do what you have to do.
Make a smart move and be able to live and look forward to better times, do not wait until you have to come back from rock bottom.
Banks have the right to take your home if things do not work out, the same with your car. It is their right. They understand there is a risk as well as you do. They allow for this unfortunate outcome!
They get to bang up your credit and take the house….. so what! If you have to eat and house yourself the choice is simple. Walk away and regroup!
Walking away from a mortgage you cannot afford and never should have applied for is not the immoral or fiscally irresponsible thing to do! Quite the opposite, in fact, as it would allow property values to come back down to reality — that is, in tandem with local mean incomes. Some of your neighbors may ball you out for putting a dent in their property values, but it’s called market normalization/correction for a reason. Even cursory research shows that the numbers are still way out of whack all over the country, including some of the major vortexes, like Florida and Arizona. Walking away would also free up the deed to a home for buyers who have actually saved money and don’t need to gig the system to get what they want. These buyers were essentially in collusion with banks when they goosed their mort apps. Most either embellished their gross income (fraud) or put nothing down, figuring it was pie in the sky from here on out; very few were actually seeking shelter because they were simply sick of renting and/or living the often semi-nomadic life of the renter.
As for buyers who paid to much out of hysteria and can still afford to overpay; that’s your call, but do not mistake this for altruism or high principal – you are simply throwing your money into a pit that will only widen over the next four years or more, trumping whatever black mark you find on your credit rating by walking away. Think with your head, not with your heart.
Walk away and let the chips fall where they may already. The cat just ain’t gonna fit back in the bag.
Yes you lose whatever equity you have in the house, your credit score gets dinged big time and in my state if you foreclose, you can’t buy a house for four years. perhaps that isn’t a big deal to some however those that are financially responsible don’t want to get in that situation. I am speaking of those people who live within their means and lost a job not those who really believed they could afford a 300K house making $14K a year.
Yes a credit score is just a number unfortunately if you have a bad credit score you can’t even rent an apartment! so where do you go from here?
Clearly, the house is not the issue. It’s the moral and financial obligation you are walking away from. You made a legally binding deal and now, like a douche bag, are uncomfortable with the terms and believe you can just renege.
Okay. Go ahead, but realize that you have also given up any grounds to complain when you are never again allowed to enter into legally binding contracts or deals that elevate your standard of living. Even if temporarily.
“Walk-Aways” should be relegated to the bottom levels of society and branded with an appropriate mark, declaring them scum.
Do the right thing, indeed.
I agree with these posters and have my own experience. IT is a LIE that Realtors promote that paying monthly mortgage interest is preferable to paying monthly rent. Realtors boast that paying a mortgageg is really like a “savings plan”. You pay a small amount of principal each month AND they brag that your house is ALWAYS an appreciating asset.
Here is what we did. We were homeowners and saw the bubble on the horizon back in 1998. In the past we had been upside down on home mortgage, but didn’t know it would ever get this bad.
We have always been believers in the REAL ESTATE LIE. So we ran an exoeriment. After we sold our house in 1998 (it was a VERY difficult thing to do), we rented only one block away.
Our rent was about the same as our monthly mortgage (PITI). WE decided to not rely on our monthly principal accumulations to save. Instead we started a REAL savings plan. It was painful at first. We had to downsize our spending significantly. We were comfortable with our CC bils, but notice how much we were spending on interest.
We paid down all our con sumer debt—while still paying the rent.
After paying off our 10 credit cards IN full, we kept saving the money we would have used to pay our credit cards.
In a short time, we noticed that we were saving lotys of money. We stayed on the frugal road and saved and saved wondering when the bubble would pop.
The bubble has only started to pop. Today we have over $400,00 CASH in Credit Union _ NEVER BANKS–savings accounts, spread out over 5 different credit unions. We pulled out of the stock market in 2007 when we saw all the lying there.
You may ask—but what about your investments? How can you make money if the banks are only paying 1% interes?
It does not matter, if we put the money in a mattress!! We have blearned the REAL EVIL IN THIS are the Realtors, mortgage companies, banks and their enabler working for our government (Greenspan, Paulsen, Geithner and chums).
Bottom line—if we paid our monthly PITI in our house over the past ten years, we would NEVER HAVE THIS MUCH money saved—even if we sold at the “peak” of the bubble.
Look at our credit rating—!We paid off 14 credit cards —and two house mortgages over the years. We have not had ANY DEBT for eight years.
WE HAVE NO “CREDIT RATING ” WHATSOEVER!. WE can buy almost anything we want—with cASH—WE HAVE AMPLE CASH for retirement! —-if we stuck with our Bank run 401K’s they would have taken our money. Cash out and RUN!
The bottom line is LOOK OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. I AM NOT A DEADBEAT, but thats what banks call a person who does NOT owe them money.
I went to my credit union just to see if I could get any credit —-and they gave me my FIRST CREDIT CARD IN TEN YEARS, yet I had NO credit score— NONE— I didnt even exist.
They say our savings accounts— and said—we can take a”chance” on you without any credit. We are at the maximum insurable NCUA amounts per bank. We have a new card with $10,000 credit limit, and learned a new game.
Our Crfedit union has a rewards program. They PAY us to use it. WE now put everything on our credit cartd…shopping rent, any purchases. But the game is that they stick you with huge chgages and fees for “late” payments—they learned this from the banks. We send in the CC payments the day we make the charges. LOL
Today we receive from $100-200/month FROM the Credit unions as a “gift card”. Not bad new source of income.
Life is not bad when you walk away from your mortgage or CREDIT card debts. It will only take you a little time- Don’t worry—walk from all of the debt. We have driven the same cars for 16 years. They run fine. AND NO CAR PAYMENTS.
The Bankers, Insurance and Wall street are the enemies of this country, not communism, socialism or religious extremists. The bankers have allies with our government to enslave us all BUT NOT ME and my wife.
WE pay our income taxes AND NO INTEREST. WE can do anything –without worrying needlessly about nails, stucco and termite ridden wood.
Yes, I concur. Credit cards are for convenience (esp business travel) and rewards only. In a sense, one should treat them as a debit card so that paying the tab in full, every month, becomes a lifelong habit. All and all, it’s a nice way to give oneself a bonus, every year. My GF & I were able to stay at certain hotels for free, during our annual vacation.
Ben – You sir are my HERO!
The world needs more people like you & your wife. It is about time that people realize that a credit score is nothing more than the chain that the banks & credit card companies use to leverage you to pay them ungodly interest rates and nickel & dime fees that most of the time make absolutely no sense.
A credit score in my opinion is like a hostage for the financial institutions of the world – “Don’t default or the credit score gets it!”
Seriously, if it comes down to a choice between damaging your credit score or paying for a $500k house that you could buy next door for $250k, or rent for $2k per month – come on, that’s not even a choice.
I think this stigma surrounding walking away is completely silly – it is the legal right of the borrower to do so – it was written in the contract BY THE BANK – granted it was written initially to protect the lenders, but now that the tables are turned – it’s nice to see the joe 6 packs of the worlds be able to stick it to the man – I say let em – DAMN THE MAN!
The message, no matter your personal beliefs is at the end of the day material items are exactly that, material items.
I have personally experienced the overwhelming anxiety of losing my job, eating through my savings and racking up more debt on my credit cards until they were maxed out. I finally had to miss that first payment… I was so scared of what was happening, watching my credit and everything else I had built slip through my fingers. And now, the starter house I purchased at $369,000 can only sell for $200,000. I turned to my family who lent me more money to try and make things work because I did want to honor my responsibilities.
But at the end of the day I could not produce enough income to make everything work and low and behold I finally accepted that making my mortgage payment was no longer an option. I put the house on the market for short sale and moved to a new city where I could find a good job. Realizing that my probability of a successful short sale was about the same as the government fixing the economy I finally consulted with a real estate attorney to find out what is going to happen to me. It was the best $300 I spent to find out that I would not be at risk of being sued for the difference.
I find it interesting how many people read this article and commented back with such negative comments “douche bags, and scum” were words used to describe millions of Americans.
People who are walking away are not the bottom rung we are college educated, hard working, and like all great Americans we are risk takers, we took a chance on the American dream and things didn’t work out. Fortunately we have a system that allows failure…. not just for the individual but also for banks and business.
Credit scores and bank accounts will rebuild…. It is time we realize the things we own are not what makes us great….
I don’t understand why people think that it is my responsibility (tax-payer) to make people that made poor decisions, whole again. You are the same people that were always bragging about how “smart” you were, “making” money in real-estate. I have waited 8 years for this bubble mess to subside. The whole time this fiasco was taking place people looked down on me from there 4,000 square foot McMansions and criticized me for not “jumping in”. So, now I get to to pay for everybody’s mistake. This is not just or fair. I am being penalized, because some government, city, state, or county worker making $17 an hour, thought they were entitled to live in the same neighborhood as a private sector scientist, lawyer, doctor, or engineer. There is a reason that you aren’t doing one of these professions, you’re not smart…and your financial decisions prove it.
Well, what a bunch of malarky. A house is more than a house. It is the alpha and the omega, the begining and the end. A house is a place to raise a family, a part of the community, the foundation of this Republic – but enough sales talk.
A house is an investment that always goes up. In fact, since 1812 houses have gone AT LEAST 20% per year (give or take) – except for the Great Depression but our financial wizards know how to prevent those from happening again. When you rent – MY GOD – you don’t get anything back. Plus, with an 80 year resetting mortgage you don’t have to pay income taxes (unless you still have income left).
So – buy a house. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Did you know that this nation is being overrun with immigrants who are buying up the existing supply. Not only that, but wacko enviromentalists won’t allow any new housing to be built. That’s right, nothing. And we are running out of land! (Well, except in the Dakotas) There is unbelievable demand and no new supply. If you don’t buy now you will miss out forever and while the smart folks who bought yesterday will reap untold millions, you might find yourself living on the street kicking yourself for missing this chance
And safety? Each housing unit in America is occupied by the ownerand that’s why there can’t be any speculation in housing. Even in a 5000 unit condo development, each unit (even those unsold units under construction) are occupied by the owner in person. So this talk about a potential bubble is nonsense. Since the foundation of this nation NOBODY has EVER speculated in Real Estate and thats a fact.
A house is just a house? This is just loose talk by a bunch of terrorists and commies that hate America. So ignore the naysayers and visit your local real estate agent so you too can persue the dream – before its too late
Boy the reponses are just amazing. Americans are really just deadbeats. Try to shirk off your signed responsibilities in any other country. I guess americans treat their obligations like they do their spouses…if your worth goes down…walk. Gee my wife is not as good looking as she was 20 years ago-> walk. The contract(s) financial and social are down -> walk. What a culture. A culture of woodstock teenagers.
clyde ankle nice name first of all, second you sound like a brainwashed sheeple. wake up the whole system is a ponzi scheme and has to be abolished period.
Have no problem with walkaways….just insist they have the word “liar” tattooed to their forehead.
The government (us) should not be responsible for paying on the same mistake twice…..
Squat don’t walk away. Demand they produce the note. Find out who the legal note holder is and ask to see the original note you signed. Not a copy or certification. Only the actual note holder can forclose on you. Not the mortgage server, Not the trustee lawyer. Sue the banks for the ponzi scheme they played against your home. Sue the banks for wrecking the economy and lost wages, home values, lost jobs, etc…. They caused it all. The banks cause the artifical inflated values, The speculation, the buyers they put into mortgages knowing they did not qualify. The mortgage products with no down, no proof of income, etc…, The banks put packaged the can of worms “only to make a profit”. Now they opened the can and want you the tax payer to eat it. Our Government is giving them capital with our money, knowing it is all a can of worms.
Do the American people want this …NO… But the figure heads do it anyhow…. Government by the people for the people (I think not) more like corporate coruption for themselves. And no one is doing anything about it. I say: destroy Bank of America, Citi Group, Bank of New York, Chase Morgan, If you have accounts, credit cards eliminate them with these criminals. Use your credit unions or local banks.
Start a USA revoult by not paying your mortgages and taxes and demand that the American people should be given the capital funds to bail out and help our economy recover from what these Banks did to us. $200,000 each American. This would recover the economy from the bottom up. Once we get this bail out we would pay the taxes and mortgages providing the money was really there to begin with and “not made up of thin air”, and the note really exisit. Chances are they lost it a long time ago somewhere in the trash/shredder at some defunked hedge fund. Ran by Bernie Madoff or people like him. Wake up it was all a ponzi scheme.
Its funny how some people mix moral and financial/contract obligations here.
Your contract with your lender states what your obligations are in order to remain in possession of the house. The penalty for breach of that contract is, you lose the house. Its up to you to think, would I rather stick with this contract, or break it, pay the penalty, and let the house go.
Often corporations engage in takeovers, and then decide not to go through with it. They pay a breakup fee, but nobody suggests they’ve done something immoral by changing their minds. Sometimes they are actually applauded for it, because even though they pay a breakup fee, it was a prudent business decision.
Why should it be any different with any of us? Pay the penalty written into your contract, and move on to the next deal, just like corporations do. What’s good for the goose is more than good enough for the gander.
I know a nice 70 year old Chinese man who bought his house in cash after saving for many years, as his culture has been doing for thousands of years. However, as the good days were rolling and property taxes were being raised both percentagewise and on an appreciated value, he can no longer afford to live there and he is forced to rent part of the house.
A house is just a house indeed.
The oracle of Kypseli
Ed and Denise, GREAT posts!
Here is the deal. Anyone who bought a house in the bubble areas circa 2001-2007 is a dummy. You are a dolt that was complicit in the banker’s plan to submit Americans to permanent debt servitude. The price you people paid for a material object, a house, was absurd. You own that huge, huge mistake and now all of us common folk will pay for it and so will our children. No matter what happens, the banker’s will be made whole and the cost will be tacked onto our taxes.
So that is where we are at now. What do we do from here? Well, we all know the bankers are still getting gluttonous payout first from Bush and now from Obama and his crew. We can’t stop that but we can try and get a little something out of this mess for the common people, America’s working class.
If your house is worth less than you paid then stop making the mortgage payment to the banks. Wells Fargo just proved that they do not need you to make a mortgage payment to make billions in profit. Of course Well’s profit ultimately will come from tax payers, but you can’t stop the Gov from doing that. The only thing you have control over is your mortgage payment on a hugely inflated debt.
1) Don’t worry about your credit. The banks will have to make concessions for victims of the great housing bubble or they will have no one to sell the house we give back, to.
2) This is self preservation. Wild inflation will be the result of all this money printing Bernanke and the boys are doing, it may take a few years, but it will show up, and it will be very expensive for all of us. You need to save as much as you can right now if you ever hope to survive what’s coming. Every mortgage payment you make to those scum bankers, on that crazy high mortgage is more money for them to get fat and less for you to survive the next nasty surprise they have in store for the common folks.
3) Housing affordability is important. You reckless bubble buyers need to get on board here. Stop thinking about buying that REO for $200k and flipping it for $250k. Those days need to die so your sins can be absolved. We all need housing to fall to 2x earnings. We need houses to be very affordable if we are ever to survive the inflation that is coming. Pensions, 401ks and the like are no longer something we can rely on. The pigs will take everything they can from us. The only thing we have power over is our “debts” to them, and any future debts that we enter into with these evil banker.
Don’t play the “hide the foreclosure inventory” game with the banks and realtors. Don’t get into bidding wars on the few REOs the banks let out on the market. Let them sit! Wait until prices fall, a lot more or you will be very, very sorry. This is our chance folks. There is no stigma in walking away from a bloated loss from a banker sponsored housing gambling spree. The only stigma will be if you do not get on board and help bring housing to affordability with the same zeal that you showed while bidding houses to absurdity.
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This is the first Blog I have ever read. We’ve just decided to walk. The building of our house put us finacially bankrupt. The Banks dangled a carrot with the promise of a mortgage we could pay that would pay off all our credit. That didn’t happen and we can’t afford to pay the interest anymore. It hurts to walk away from our dreams. Was it our dream? I don’t recall looking forward to not being able to Pay my Kids Hockey Fees. The Realtors & Bankers directed us to the point of no turning back, then under threat of losing “everything”. A house is not everything, it’s something, but not everything. I gave my 10 year old the option, sell the House or my 67 Cadillac. His reponse, I would rather live in the car. Yes, he is 10, but his logic made me think. I have given enough of myself already. I want to live again. I’m not walking away from a dream, I’m walking away from a nightmere. I am just glad I woke up before it cost me my Classic Car. With the money I am going to save, I think I’ll take the familly for a trip in the old Caddy.