Walking Away From Your Mortgage Should Not Be An Option

EAGAN, Minn., April 5, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ — While many homeowners continue to wrestle with the fallout of the housing crisis, a majority of Americans say that simply walking away from a mortgage shouldn’t be an option for homeowners, according to a new survey by FindLaw.com, the most popular legal information website.

Many homeowners still facing potential foreclosures or being “underwater” on their mortgages (meaning they owe more on the loan than the house is currently worth) have simply been walking away from their mortgages and refusing to make the required monthly payments. There are no reliable figures on how many homeowners have chosen to take this path, sometimes referred to as a “strategic default.”

According to the FindLaw.com survey, the majority of Americans – 60 percent – believe that it is “never OK” for homeowners to simply stop making payments on their mortgages. One-third of the population (34 percent) says it’s OK for homeowners to walk away from mortgages, but only if they aren’t able to make the monthly payments. Only 3 percent believe that homeowners should be able to walk away from mortgages anytime they want.