Should I Stay or Should I Go

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Millions of families are having a difficult time in todays economy, and with mortgage payments increasing those families are having to decide between saving their homes or saving themselves. The latter deteriorates your credit and will expose you to a possible foreclosure. So the burning question when faced with this dilemma is “Should I stay or should I go” or should I refi my home?

The facts are that many people took cash out, borrowed more than they can afford, took teaser rates, or applied using some form of a stated income loan which would often over inflate the borrowers actual income through the home refinance or home purchase process. With the market in it’s current condition and many families finding values decreasing past the amount owed; people are no finding they can’t even afford their monthly payments. Why are so many people leaving their homes to the bank to foreclose on; I might never know. Is this the correct decision?

I don’t have the right or wrong answer here but I do know that up until the 90’s most people bought a house as a place to live and somewhere to stay and raise a family.I understand that is a safe thought and we all have to realize its a hard truth too.With national home values increasing faster than expected in the 1990’s to 7% a year; it started a trend. Lending practices began to recover from the S/L crisis and a new way of thinking was born in the lending world. Your still alive right?What is your credit score? If this is the case paying for a house is a given.With that the mid 90’s saw lower home prices and stated income was normal and accepted.Then we saw our real problem of appreciating home values that had people buying luxury items they just could not afford. To finance these toys then would take cash out via a home refinance or debt consolidation loan and here the cycle truly began my home as an ATM.

Fast forward about 10 years to 2008 we are all faced with the dilemma should I stay or should I go. If I walk from my home I can buy another house in two years(in theory) based on current lending standards which if property values keep going down I can buy another house or maybe even buy back my existing house at half the price I used to owe on before I walked. This is all true you can walk, you could buy your home for less, but do you really want to?Borrowers are as much to blame as anyone else; news coverage of the decline in home values is only prompting people to leave their homes. Again You knew what you were doing when you took the cash out home refinance, you knew what you were doing when you bought the home, don’t bring everybody else down even further as somewhere along the line we must just stop this madness.It is possible for all of us to avoid a depression by starting with our mortgages; we all need to take responsibility.

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