I’m meeting more and more homeowners who just don’t want to wait for the market value of their homes to catch-up to the price they paid or the mortgage they have. If your home has a lost a lot of equity and your underwater, maybe you are struggling to make the payments, their is hope, really! check out making homes affordable to see if you can get help.
If you don’t qualify for this government program try contacting your lender to see if they can assist with a loan modification if you don’t get help from the lender DON’T walk away! Lenders are pushing for more people to short sell their home because you are helping them solve a problem and saving the bank money. Yes, you are helping the lender solve a problem, both you and the lender have a problem. You can’t afford the house and they are not getting paid. Some lenders are also giving borrowers (the seller) cash at closing to help move. Wells Fargo offered one of my clients $2,500!
Check out a video I did on short sales to see why it’s better for to short sell your home than walking away! Video Link
NEW YORK – Feb. 4, 2010 – An estimated 4.5 million homeowners owe more than their homes are worth. That number is likely to peak at 5.1 million in June, affecting 10 percent of homeowners and making them increasingly likely to just walk away.
“We’re now at the point of maximum vulnerability,” says Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. “People’s emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.”
Consultants at Oliver Wyman calculated that 17 percent of owners defaulting in 2008 –about 588,000 – chose to default even though they could pay.
First American estimates that it would cost around $745 billion – about the same as the original 2008 bank bailout – to restore all underwater borrowers to the break-even point.
Doing so would be seen as highly unfair by many taxpayers, says Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, but doing nothing would be another blow to a fragile economy.
Source: The New York Times, David Streitfeld (02/022010)