Walkaways: the 'opposite of simple'

Last week I wrote about the consumer equivalent of dissociative personality disorder, how I'm seeing sane buyers and sellers, traumatized by the gyrations of the recent real estate market, split into multiple personalities.

On reflection, I think that column was more than a bit autobiographical. I feel split, too -- between the in-the-trenches personal details of my clients' individual situations and transactions and the flyover view of consumer questions I receive in my columnist/writer work. Half the time, I see what clients want and need from the very narrow viewpoint of my buyers and homeowners, my area, and so forth. But that view zooms out to a national perspective, and includes buyers, sellers, etc., when I look at reader e-mails.

But these days, my two personalities have been reunited in a common theme: the walkaway.

And what a touchy subject it is. Occasionally, I get irate e-mails from homeowners raging about how their neighbors who have walked away from their homes have damaged their own home's values. More often, I get notes from distressed homeowners who would already have walked away, but for the fear of some even-worse consequence -- asking me what the ramifications and consequences of walking away actually are. And, in fact, to the extent that my zoomed-out viewpoint keeps an immediate pulse on what buyers and sellers and homeowners are thinking, I can vouch that interest in the walkaway is at an all-time high.

Why now? Just when it seems like the market is recovering? Here's this -- I got a bunch of walkaway inquiries right around New Year's Day. And boy oh boy, did I get the unanimous sense that 2009 was tough -- pretty much everywhere. A lot of the walkaway investigators related tales of long, arduous and fruitless loan modification discussion with their lenders.

The consensus? They're over it. Exhausted of the suspense of not knowing whether they'd be able to keep their homes for the long term, even people who had lived in their homes without making a mortgage payment for as much as a year expressed a readiness and willingness to chuck it all and walk away -- the sooner they could get closure, one way or the other, the better. ...CONTINUED

All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.