Taking the inside of the house with you

“If no-money-down was the real estate password for the first half of the 2000s, “jingle-mail” might be the word for rest of it.” Says Michael Pollick in Herald Tribune on Thursday, 15 May 2008 CNBC asked “Homeowner “Walkaways”: Are They Fact Or Fiction?” Even the New York Times (By VIKAS BAJAJ, Published: May 10, 2008) the idea that home owners are walking away en masse is called out as an “urban myth”

The same New York Times in an article by GRETCHEN MORGENSON published: January 13, 2008 said ” WHAT do banks call it when a troubled borrower abandons her home, sending them the keys? “Jingle mail.”

And what do they call it when an irate borrower abandons his home, yanking electrical outlets from walls, leaving faucets running and otherwise trashing it on the way out?

“Taking the inside of the house with you.”

There’s nothing like black humor to define — however sadly and starkly — the blows that keep on coming in this mortgage debacle. But make no mistake, lenders are only beginning to learn how to manage the onslaught of jingle mail and houses turned inside out.”

And while the United States Congress is rapidly moving a bill that will allow the federal government to insure up to $300 billion in refinanced loans for home owners in financial distress one of its members, the newly elected California Congresswoman Laura Richardson not only bought a house without a down payment but also walked away from it!  

The Capitol Weekly reports that California Congresswoman Laura Richardson walked away from the mortgage on her $535,000 Sacramento home, letting the house slip into foreclosure and disrepair less than two years after she bought it with no money down.

“While being elevated to Congress in a 2007 special election, Richardson apparently stopped making payments on her new Sacramento home, and eventually walked away from it, leaving nearly $600,000 in unpaid loans and fees,” the publication reports.

Politicians are known to flip flop but talk about being on two sides of the fence at the same time!

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