Walk Away Nation

Suppose, housing price to income ratio fall back to their historic norms. What are the worst consquences of massive declines in home equity.

My fear is that looking at years of being underwater and the likely prospect of having to move for family or job reasons some time in the next 7 years, that potentially hundreds of thousands if not more than a million Alt-A and perhaps even Prime borrowers will walk away from their homes.

We may reach point where walking away is the financially prudent thing for these people to do, not to mention the least painful in the short term. They become subprime borrowers for seven years but they we likely to be forced into selling the house for less than they owed within seven years anyway. Yet, in this case they get to move from what is bone crushing monthly mortgage payment to a much more reasonable monthly rent payment.

There may be some sense of embarrassment for many middle class borrowers to walk away from their homes and become renters but its the type of phenomenon that could become rapidly more popular once the first, most desperate home owners do it with few consquences.

In this case we are looking at a rapidly accelerating rate of foreclosures and perhaps a housing bust that begins to feed on itself and even overshoots the long run equilibrium by a substantial amount. How possible is this scenario? I don't know but it worries me.