Nah, it’s better to just walk away and leave your neighbors with the eyesore abandoned house and the lowered property values.
The house next door to me has been vacant for 4 years. The COP who lived there took out a second and bought a really big boat and then just stopped making payments, saved up a ton of dough, bought a new house (using his wife's credit) and walked away leaving a boatload of trash in the front yard and back yard.
In order to keep the weeds down, the bank or somebody poisoned the front yard with gallons and gallons of Grass killer and of course it killed my lawn because of the downhill run off.
As far as I can tell it has still not been foreclosed on. The bank is just sitting on it waiting for the market to get back to where they can sell it and not lose a lot. However the guy was $450,000 upside down when he walked away and the house is probably not worth more than $100,000 because it basically needs to be rebuilt.
In the old days this cop would have gone to debtors prison.
Ah, the new American Dream! keep in mind, there are more than a few people out there who did not bite off more than they could chew, but had their asses chewed off by a failed economy and job market.
There about 5-6 houses in my sub division like that. Some sitting empty for 2-3 years now.
At the beginning of Obama’s reign the house across the street from me had loans up to 120% of value. It changed hands once a year for about 4 years when the tenants couldn’t make the payments (they blew the 20% extra on ‘stuff’).
That's what happened in my old neighborhood. Property values there still stink, and are well below similar areas in other parts of town, while other neighborhoods in the same town are recovering nicely. It was a heavily blue-collar area and a lot of folks here lost their jobs. I can think of one house that's just sitting empty, and has been for more than two years. No buyers, even at prices lower than dropping a manufactured home on the same sized lot in the same area.