You bought what you thought would be a great long term investment, and maybe you put very little money down hoping values would continue to climb. Then the housing bubble popped and your home value took a huge downturn, especially in California housing markets, Florida Housing markets, and Nevada Housing markets. If this is your situation, you are like many Americans making mortgage payments on a house that is worth less than you owe. The temptation to walk away from your mortgage and have the bank foreclose on the property may be strong. You may not have considered however the long term implications of a foreclosure.

The housing market downturn is similar to cycles in any other investment vehicle in which there are both up and down cycles. Although the values may be declining now, once the credit market shake-up has run its course, values will likely start climbing once again. This will happen once there is more liquidity in the financial marketplace and banks are focused on loaning money for mortgages once again. You must ask yourself if you are walking away from your mortgage because you cannot afford it, or because you just don’t like the fact you are upside down in terms of valuation.

Defaulting on your mortgage and allowing the bank to foreclose on the property has many short and long term ramifications you may not have considered. The first of which is you will unlikely be able to get a new home mortgage, refinance, or any other type of home mortgage for a minimum of five years. A foreclosure on your record is an automatic disqualification to any potential lender in giving you a new mortgage loan, and is actually federally mandated under recent laws passed by the senate in an effort to get home owners to work with their lenders. Next, consider what missing 6-8 mortgage payments and the subsequent foreclosure will do to your credit score. If for example you have perfect 700+ FICO scores now, you will come out the other end with high 400???s to low 500’s FICO scores and the foreclosure could impact your credit for as much as 10 years. Additionally, Landlords may be unlikely to rent to you as you will now have a proven history of not paying for your housing costs. You will likely need to come up with $4000 – $8000 dollars to move into a new rental unit, calculating first and last month’s rent plus security deposits.

There are also moving costs to consider, the increased amount you will pay in taxes by not having the mortgage deduction, and the fact you will receive a 1099 and may have to pay taxes on the amount of money your lender needs to write down on the property. There are no free rides here and the average first year cost to a consumer who gets foreclosed on is over $26,000.

One option you may consider is using an Attorney to negotiate with your lender to acquire a Loan Modification or Principal Write-down to get some mortgage payment relief. Attorneys can negotiate with your lender on your behalf to lower your interest rate or even reduce principal balance in some cases if your are experiencing financial hardship. In speaking with California Attorney Robert Scurrah of Consumer Debt Advocate ( http://www.cdalawcenter.com ), a law firm specializing in just such Home Loan Modifications and Loss Mitigation in all 50 states, Robert told me that “ We have been very successful in working with lenders to get them to modify the term of existing loans, lowering interest rate and monthly payments to one the borrower can afford, and even getting lenders to forgive past due balances or principal balance with forbearance agreements to avoid the foreclosure process. It all is predicated on the true financial hardship we can prove to the lender and if there were any Truth in Lending violations or Predatory Lending violations on the original loan. Mortgage fraud has been rampant, specially with sub-prime borrowers and our success rate has been excellent in the loan modification process”.

In researching loan modification companies, this writer has also found that there are a lot of predators out there and many debt settlement companies and mortgage companies have gotten into the loan modification business. Unfortunately, these companies are collecting fees but have very little leverage with the lender and will soon be regulated out of existence due to their predatory practices. Only use an attorney or HUD approved foreclosure counselor for assistance in this process, and beware of companies who state they are “Attorney based”, Attorney backed”, “Foreclosure Consultants”, or “Attorney Assisted” as these are not actually law firms and cannot guarantee your legal rights in the process as you are not actually retaining an attorney. Due your diligence is this area before hiring anyone to help you negotiate with your lender.

Before you decide to walk away from your property and allow it to be foreclosed on, we feel it is important to consider all of the short and long term credit and financial implications of doing so. It is also important to act quickly before saving your home is too late, as once the lender sends you a Notice of Default, you may have incurred thousands of dollars in legal fees that will make the negotiation process that much more difficult to achieve.