If I were you I wouldn’t feel bad about walking away. The mortgage contract essentially said:
– If you make timely payment, you get to keep the house.
– If you don’t, the lender get to foreclose.
When you tell the lender: “go ahead, take the house”, you have done nothing wrong. The lender knew the risks when they lended you the money.
In my opinion, in the next few years we will see a tremendous amount of foreclosures. Since foreclosures will be so common, the stigma will be lessened/eliminated.
It’s like divorce. It used to be a big deal in the 80s (in term of the stigma).
