Mortgage woes causing some to walk away

You know the financial outlook is glum when the mortgage brokers who arrange loans have quit paying their own debts.

That's the case for one Las Vegas broker, an investor who's given up making good on her rental property's mortgage after a year of fruitless attempts to renegotiate the loan with her bank.

In halting her monthly payments, the broker has joined a growing nationwide trend.

Walking away from a mortgage has always been a homeowner's last resort -- it flies in the face of the American dream. And experts say it should remain a worst-case scenario.

But with the deepening economic crisis fast adding to the 12 million mortgages already "underwater" -- the term for when a home's debt exceeds its market value -- it's an option more are likely to consider as home prices continue to fall.

The local mortgage broker said she owes more than $100,000 beyond her home's worth. She's had trouble keeping renters who could cover the $2,400 monthly payment. When she first called her bank in February to discuss new loan terms, the bank told her she had too many assets to qualify for renegotiation. She called back in October and learned that she was by then too underwater for a modification. She's paid $7,500 out of pocket in 2008 to stay current in her mortgage, but with her brokerage business slow, she can no longer afford the financial hit. She's stopped paying the loan altogether.

"In this economy, I can't keep paying for an empty house that is now more than $100,000 upside down," she said.

No central clearinghouse tracks walk-aways, so it's difficult to tally how widespread walking away is in Las Vegas.

But the local mortgage broker who's stopped paying the bills on her rental home said the number of customers calling her to ask about ditching their own properties has doubled in the last six months.

"They don't want to walk, because mentally, they feel obligated," she said. "But they're not getting help."

Bill Ochs Jr., president and owner of Nevada Mortgage, said his banking and brokerage company hasn't seen an increase in clients walking away.

What Ochs sees, though, is a growing sense of hopelessness among customers.

"People are looking at their options," including walking away, Ochs said. "I get calls on a regular basis from people who are wondering if there's going to be any help for them. There's less of an attitude that there's a light at the end of the tunnel."

Ochs said walk-aways could become more common for three reasons.

First, some underwater homeowners already received loan modifications once. They hesitate to ask for another chance, because they're sure the bank will reject their plea a second time around, especially if their income has fallen due to job loss or cut hours.

Second, homeowners who have stayed current on their mortgages resent falling home prices. The consumer who bought his place for $300,000 and sees the same home for sale down the street for $200,000 could be tempted to buy the cheaper property and then abandon his more-expensive house.

Finally, Congress in 2007 repealed an Internal Revenue Service regulation that treated forgiven mortgage debt as taxable income. That removed a major financial deterrent to walking away, Ochs said.

Diane Shackle found it gut-wrenching to walk away from a mortgage she took out in times that were better for both her and the U.S. economy.

But the reality was undeniable: While she was keeping up with the monthly payments, she said she could no longer afford to buy food for herself or even kitty litter for her two cats.

So the 44-year-old cocktail waitress walked away from her two-bedroom condo in Southern California last July, turning her back on a debt of nearly $200,000.

"It ripped me up to do it but I was tired of worrying and I had no food in the house," said Shackle. "I decided, you know what, I'm not living like this. I've got to quit (get out) before I kill myself."

Mortgage and financial experts hesitate to recommend a voluntary action that not only threatens to wreck your credit score for years but can result in authorities coming after other assets. But depending on state laws, they acknowledge it makes sense to at least look at it in certain situations.

"You have to make the best decision for yourself, business-wise, which could be walking away from the house," said Nicole Gelinas, a chartered financial analyst and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Mortgage walking surfaced as a phenomenon in the wake of plummeting housing prices. The practice also is known as "jingle mail," referring to the borrower mailing the keys to the lender and surrendering the house.

Bank of America Corp. brought the practice to light a year ago, reporting that a growing number of people who defaulted on their mortgages were current on their credit cards. This suggested that at least some saw bailing out on their houses as a way to gain control of their finances.

Though statistics aren't readily available on the number of mortgage walkers, a year later, Bank of America spokesman Terry Francisco acknowledges that the problem still exists and said it has been exacerbated by the housing market's further decline.

Speculators who bought houses for investment purposes rather than to live in are the likeliest to do it, he suggested.

Shackle doesn't fit that category. The single, first-time homebuyer bought a two-bedroom condo in Calimesa, Calif., in 2006 for $191,000. She wasn't required to put any money down despite her limited income as a waitress, thanks to a lofty credit score of 788.

The financing consisted of two interest-only loans with initial rates of about 7 percent and 10 percent. Her monthly payment, including an escrow account for property taxes and insurance, was about $1,400 a month. That was manageable until she had serious problems with asthma and missed a lot of work.

Shackle was never late with a payment, she said. But after paying the bills she had no money left over to buy groceries, and lost nearly 50 pounds. Despite her pleas, she said she couldn't get the lenders to refinance once the collapse of the housing market had slashed the home's value to about $150,000.

Suddenly it was no longer about an investment or the tax advantages of homeownership, it was about trying to survive the crush of bills.

"When you're a homeowner you think, 'OK, I'm going to go ahead and try to pay this off,'" she said. "But when I tried to get refinanced and everybody pretty much shut their door on me, I felt like I had no alternative."

Rather than stop paying and wait to be foreclosed on, she sought help from You Walk Away, one of the companies that has emerged to address the growing number of underwater homeowners. The San Diego-based business counsels the homeowners to, as its Web site says, "take control of their financial future" by making a strategic decision to default if necessary.

Jon Maddux, principal and co-founder of You Walk Away, which charges $995 for consultations about their rights regarding foreclosure, says his company doesn't advocate jingle mail per se, but rather staying in the home as long as legally allowable until the bank takes it back.

Underwater homeowners should exercise caution when signing up for any service that offers assistance, because consumer advocates say much of the advice can be found online or through non-profit agencies.

Shackle moved out of the condo in July and rented an apartment for $750 a month. Foreclosure still hasn't taken place. But without the burden of a mortgage gone bad, she says, now "I sleep a lot better."

About 1 in 6 of the nation's 75 million homeowners are underwater, according to Moody's Economy.com, and the total has doubled in a year. Their mortgage debt exceeds home equity by an average of $40,000. Half of these negative-equity homeowners owe more than 120 percent of their home's value. And 30 percent of homes sold in the past year were sold at a loss, according to real-estate Web site Zillow.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.