sdr you have seen many more approval letters then I have so I would defer to your statements on the vagaries of some of them. Fortunately in the ones I have had there were no such vagaries, they were clear in the direction the lender wanted to go. It doesn’t surprise me though that you have seen many of them try to keep the deficiency in place through sneaky measures.

The one thing that is never mentioned about the walkaway question is the future impact of that event. I think it is pretty easy for people to determine the walk away question for the present as you spoke of above. Of course we all know of posters here who have done so or are in the middle of doing so, or who are thinking about it. The real question is if you are someone thinking of extending credit and your applicant has walked away before, why would you lend to them again? Walking away due to hardship is one thing, however walking away due to depreciation without any hardship… I guess all lenders in the future will be dealing with that question. As you said, certainly private lenders or those supplying credit that are not choked or forced to by the govt will certainly have considerations to mull over.