Take This House and Shove it

Just what is the world coming to?

First, researchers at Northwestern and the University of Chicago found that a quarter of defaulting homeowners do so with every intention of stiffing their lenders.  What’s worse they found that people who live in neighborhoods with high default rates are less likely to find “strategic defaulting” morally wrong.  Yet many can afford to pay their mortgages; they simply choose not to.  They argue moral values towards homeownership have changed since the last recession twenty years ago. See Why They Walk Away…

Then, the Milwaukee Sentinel reports that lenders in that city are walking away from foreclosed properties they don’t what to sell and Kathleen Day of the Center for Responsible Lending says tney are seeing an increasing number of walk away properties throughout the country

Finally, Marcie Geffner asks “Is Homeownership Over?” in her current column in Inman News Features..  Her excellent piece questions the wisdom of policies promoting homeownership-and whether people really support them.

 It seems that owning a home, whether you are a borrower or a lender, just isn’t the priority that it once was.  Is the American Dream out of date?

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