Troubled borrowers are walking away from their homes - Feb. 6, 2008: "Current lending practices have created an environment where a measure as extreme as abandoning a home actually makes sense to some people. Many buyers put little or no money down, so they don't have much invested in them. That leaves them with little incentive to keep making payments when a home's market value dips below the balance of the mortgage. The most serious consequence is a tremendous hit to credit scores. For some, that's better than throwing away money they'll never recover by selling their home."
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When the post-mortems are done on this whole catastrophe, the mortgage industry will look very different. The standards for issuing mortgages have been lowered to the point of absurdity.