From the site:

"With our money back guarantee, you get it all for only $995.00. This can be made in three easy payments of $332.00"

Unless..of course you walk away from paying them.

This is just depressing. Both that there is a market for it, and that people would think it's not some sort of scam. "But the site says it's not a scam! And the interwebz never lie!"

Terrible... Another tragic symptom of that "it's not my fault" syndrome.

that gives them an extra dollar

...or you could put that $995 towards your mortgage and live an extra month in your house, FOR FREE!

Mish Shedlock called You Walk Away for answers

[globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com]

I spoke with John Maddux a "senior advocate" with You Walk Away (YWA) about the business. As one might expect it is booming. For $995 one receives a half hour of legal counsel where individual strategies are mapped out and all the laws pertaining to recourse vs. non-recourse loans as well as judicial procedures are explained to the customer. YWA also files the necessary legal papers to stop mortgage companies from calling and informs you immediately of how many days you will be able to stay in the house for free. Should the lender take longer to process the documents, YWA will keep you informed of any extra time.

Maddux informed me that YWA is currently operating in the state of California only, but Nevada and Florida will soon be coming online. Eventually they expect to be nationwide.

You have to wonder at what point the percentage of people who have had a foreclosure impacts credit scores. If lots of people have lower credit scores due to foreclosures does that make say 650 the new 700?
What does this do to the rental market? If more people are going with rentals to get out of their houses?
What about all those vacant houses?

This whole mess just seems like some odd circular argument. But the idea that we all need to go waste money on cheap plastic junk or the economy will fail seems a bit odd too.

I'm not defending You Walk Away, but suggesting that someone in foreclosure can just refi to a lower rate or sell the house is pretty uninformed. A lot of people in foreclosure have trashed credit (partly from the failure to pay their mortgage). They may be upside-down on the house. And we all know how well existing homes are selling these days.

For many people, walking away from a mortgage, especially when they have next to no equity in the house, is going to be their only option. They certainly shouldn't pay someone $1,000 to "help" them do that, though.

I just had Mountain Dew come out my nose. I shouldn't be shocked by this, but somehow I am.

This is the awesomest thing the legal profession has done since its last class act, the "You're not gonna live forever; why stay married to HER?" ads started popping up a few years back....

You gotta love this link on their site....
[www.youwalkaway.com]
=) LOL!!

"For many people, walking away from a mortgage, especially when they have next to no equity in the house, is going to be their only option."

Really? Their ONLY option?

Even better than the option of keeping their word and upholding the contract and paying off the property that they made a deal to pay off?

They bought something and now find out that it isn't worth what they paid for it? I did that on a car one time (more than one, really), many, many dinners, some hotel rooms, well, hell, LOTS OF STUFF. However, it was still my choice to purchase this stuff. Disappointing as it is to buy something and then find out that it is not worth what you paid for it we have all done it. When my wife and I bought our house ($99,000 several years ago) I was scared shiftless that I was going to throw my money away on something that wasn't worth what I paid for it. I used to stay up worrying that I would screw up in buying the house and we would be paying for it for years. I got books from the library, I attended NACA mortgage prep classes (a nonprofit aimed at getting lower income applicants into houses with standard mortgages; we used the info that they taught but did not actually go through them), I checked out books from the library, etc. This is due diligence. Whenever making a large purchase one should do it.

"Walking away" (the first new buzzword of 2008) hurts the economy in general, the specific neighborhoods that the houses reside in, and everybody's house values.

Buck up, take it like a man, and recognize that you must live up to your responsibilities.

That, and sufficient regulation of the housing market (banks and mortgage lenders especially), should help to ease this issue in the future.

IMHO (and I have said this before): The subprime mess should be cleaned up by moving all loans to a fixed rate and moving the difference in interest rate to the back of the loan (adjusting the amortization of the loan and significantly extending its life in most if not all cases). This is a good compromise in that the banks and individuals will both be somewhat unhappy and the general public will be less impacted.

Okay, this service is just a bunch of bs. Ill tell you how to do it for FREE.

To stop the calls, fax mortgage company a seize and desist letter, and list all numbers for them not to call. By law they have to obey or they can be sued.

To figure out how much time you can stay in your house, call the mortgage company and ask for the foreclosure sale date, in states like new jersey, it can take as long as 230 days after foreclosure starts. AFTER the foreclosure sale, ask how long of a redemption period there is. AND after that, ask how long before eviction(depending on the new owner at the sale)

There, just saved you $995.

Since there are a lot of empty homes around right now shouldn't there be a program perhaps allowing the homeless working poor to live in them?

Anyway! I think a lot of people are brainwashed into thinking that they NEED to buy a home no matter what because they have to live the 'American dream'. A lot of people didn't know what they were getting into or were lied to by the banks that gave them those bad loans. Everybody should share the blame.

@cabalist: I'm not sure I understand your suggestion. Are you accruing interest at a higher rate than you're repaying it?

@stevegoz: Hey now, don't blame this shit on "the legal profession!" It's not like we all got together one day and thought this up.

We thought up other stuff that day, like how to bill twelve hours in an eight-hour day.

FYI, $995/half hour is probably the highest hourly rate in the world.

Maybe I should go one further and maintain a database of empty houses awaiting sale. They people could pay me lots of money, and I could tell them where to squat and for how long.

Seems foolproof to me.

I recommend that people should walk away from their homes if they get behind on the mortgage, or if it needs a new roof, or they don't like the color.

I would like home prices to keep dropping, so I can buy some cheap rental property!

They are probably talking about a deed in lue of foreclosure where you basically surrender the home by signing over the deed to the house to the mortgage company.
BUT there are things you have to do in order to qualify for this. Once you do those things you can qualify.
It basically saves foreclosure fees which can run up and above $25k

QWICKONE: I would freeze the payment amounts at their current levels for all homes under a certain national $ amount (this may have to be done regionally or even by county [oh joy] and would be a policy point to concentrate on; this would also only apply to people/families with only one home), change the interest rate (ie I would let the ARMs 'reset' to the higher rate maybe minus a point), and extend the backend of the mortgage to account for the higher amount of money they will be repaying. This would effectively extend the life of the loan. How *exactly* to rework the amortization? That would be a good policy discussion to have with an accountant.

I prefer this method to the one where all rates are frozen and then converted to a fixed-rate mortgage. I think that rewards what we, as a society, want to discourage.

Forgetting everything else that's wrong with this, I hate statements such as "up to 8 months or more". "Up to" implies an upper limit of 8 months. The "or more" part is contradictory.

I actually think $1000 is a bargain for this kind of service. First, this is all they deal with so you don't have a bumbling lawyer looking up laws and drawing up documents and charging you at least twice as much. Second, they file all the paperwork. Third, they monitor on the process.

I think this service will save people in this situation a lot more than the $1000 it costs.

@bohemian: That's kind of what I was hoping to get out of the whole recession. Plus people are defaulting at record rates on credit cards and cars. I've gotten way more offers for credit cards than I ever have (and offers for pretty decent cards with good rates... not that I'd take them, but whatever). My credit rating isn't great, but most of it is because I'm young and haven't built up much of anything.

Look on the website at the smiling happy people packing boxes while they lose their home.

I haven't seen much of a drop in home prices, everything seems to stay inflated even though the value of the actual house has dropped and the actual amount of work that needs to restore the house into living condition is a good amount.

Maybe it will get worse when I graduate and get my first real peoples job.

@Sam Glover:

I'm just ashamed that somebody thought of it before me. I could've been billing myself out at $995/30 minutes.

If I worked 30 minutes a day, that's enough to quit my day job...at five days a week that's $258K/yr. All for 650 hours worth of work.

I am now insanely jealous.

@CABALIST: I agree with a lot of what you said, but "buck up and take it like a man" is injecting morality into what is fundamentally an economic situation. Morality is a funny thing -- it causes people not to act in their own best interest. But if you want to talk about what it means to "be a man", then first on your list is this: take care of your family.

Working yourself to death over a house you don't want is ludicrous. Seriously. The stress on you, your spouse, your kids, etc. is a very bad thing for you in the short term and long term. People get divorced because of financial stress. Are you asking me whether I would choose my house or my marriage? Because I would let the bank come and take it today if that was the case.

Breaching a contract, especially one of the magnitude of a mortgage, is serious business. "Just walk away" suggests a cavalier attitude that I don't think really is the case for the vast majority. There is a lot of agonizing, a lot of worry and stress when contemplating shipwrecking your credit and upending your life by choosing foreclosure. But when faced with the alternative, drowning in debt, imperiling your future for a long time, and enduring so much additional stress that it could kill you or someone you love, foreclosure is freedom.

Many people made some very unwise choices. And no one is winning with the current wave of foreclosures. But the traditional economic penalties for foreclosure aren't working to dissuade people, and that's because the economic situation has changed. For many people, it's become about survival -- can't sell, can't refinance, can't rent, nothing. Until you've lived in a situation that you see no way out until it completely destroys you, you don't understand how desperate you would be for a solution.

If you want to put the topic of foreclosure on the playing field of morality, fine. But it doesn't begin and end with "a good person pays their debt no matter what". Because a good person takes care of his family, too. A good person doesn't condemn the people who depend on him to suffer for decades for a bad decision when a legally agreed-to penalty which will let him out of that obligation is available.

If you were stuck, you'd do it too. You would be an irresponsible fool to let a mortgage completely destroy your financially if foreclosure was a sounder decision. Maybe how bad it gets before you would do it is more drastic than others, but to draw the line of morality at the point where you happen to stand is arrogant and hopelessly relativistic. The next guy could point the finger and say, "I took it like a man longer than you. Shame on you, bad person."

You could look at it this way: this is creating a whole new job industry as a recession looms- foreclosure specialists! Who will offer their services the cheapest? Compete, compete, compete!

Sad.

BRILLIANT!

Also, that picture of the smiling woman packing up her houseful of foreclosed shit seems so weird to me.

Also, LENS FLARE~~~

@RandoX: My thoughts exactly. Warms the heart, don't it?

@cashmerewhore: It's CA only, so if you're someplace else, or if you're willing to service other states, you're still in luck.

@CreativeLinks: If you join my site, youwalkawaywalkaway.com, I can tell you how to walk away from paying youwalkaway.com. For $332, you'll get a 30 minute consultation and I'll tell you that you don't have to pay them for one full month!

@RandoX:

Awesome. Now to find friends lacking morals...

I mean, willing to help those facing forclosure.

Coming soon to Ohio!

Sounds like this decade's version of Canter & Seigel [en.wikipedia.org] ; charging people to fill out paperwork that they could do themselves. Unfortunately, given that their clients are people that, for the most part, got conned in the first place, it'll probably make them a mint.

I went to the gym the other day. Told them I want to lose 80 pounds by this weekend for my high school reunion. Why don't that have a pill I can take instead?

@tmccartney: I agree completely. Having worked in the mortgage industry, I can tell you I actually fielded calls from customers asking me how to do this 'the right way'.

People who are upside-down in their house, facing an ugly adjusting rate, rising property taxes and higher homeowner's insurance have literally no choice in some circumstances. Again, I'd agree with tmccartney that the last line of this piece is pretty ignorant.

I knew that someone would take offense at the "Take it like a man". Oh well, you can't win them all.

Again, there is an "agreed to" penalty for murder (rape, theft, etc.), too. Is it OK to commit murder (rape, theft, etc.) as long as you are willing to accept "a legally agreed-to penalty"? Of course not.

The penalty in a contract is there IF ONE SIDE OF THE AGREEMENT DOES NOT STICK TO THE CONTRACT. At that point the side that has been slighted has the option of petitioning a court to ENFORCE THE CONTRACT'S obligations and/or penalties.

Doing what is best for one's family is something I know about. In my comment I spoke of my worries when buying our first house:

"When my wife and I bought our house ($99,000 several years ago) I was scared shiftless that I was going to throw my money away on something that wasn't worth what I paid for it. I used to stay up worrying that I would screw up in buying the house and we would be paying for it for years. I got books from the library, I attended NACA mortgage prep classes (a nonprofit aimed at getting lower income applicants into houses with standard mortgages; we used the info that they taught but did not actually go through them), I checked out books from the library, etc. This is due diligence. Whenever making a large purchase one should do it."

That is acting like a man and living up to one's responsibilities. I work with people who earn less than I do and, at the same time we were buying our house, they were buying houses MUCH more expensive than mine. Now they are in trouble--who could have seen THAT coming (duh). If I got myself in a mess like those on now-adjusting ARMs it would be the same. If I walked away I would be irresponsible.

My friend recently walked away from his house. Sometimes it's simply the best thing a person can do for their family. In his case, he bought the house for more than it was worth at the time and financed 100% of the loan with interest only payments. He figured he and his wife would be there for a long time and it was pretty much their only option for getting a house at the time (they relocated, and his wife didn't have full time employment yet).

Fast forward a year, and they got divorced. She moved out and left him with the mortgage. When he met someone else and decided to get married, the market crashed. Since she had a bigger house with a much better mortgage, they decided to move in together to her house. They were paying two mortgages while trying to sell his other house. 14 months later, and a list price of $60,000 less than what he owed, the house still wouldn't sell. He ended up working a part time job to try and cover the added expenses. It was taking a huge toll on him and when he called the bank to try and work something out, they refused to talk to him unless he was in default.

He talked to an attorney and decided that based on the language in his contract, he could walk away and only be liable for the taxes on the bank's loss. It was a very tough decision, and he did as much as he could to sell the house. He put over $4000 into the house doing upgrades and renovations to make it more appealing to buyers.

I'm not saying that walking away is a good thing, or that it's right for everyone, but it's explicitly detailed in the contract what the terms are in these cases. Sometimes, as Fearuncertaintydoubt said, the health and welfare of your family comes before any "moral" decision to be burdened by a bad decision. Sometimes people make mistakes, sometimes they're victims of circumstance, and sometimes they're just taking advantage of the situation. I don't agree with walking away in all circumstances, but watching my friend stress about trying to sell his house for months makes me sympathize with his situation and I agree 100% with his decision.

did anyone catch this (emphasis mine)?

If you QUALIFY for our plan:

Your lender WILL NOT be able to call you in attempt to collect!
Your lender WILL NOT be able to collect any deficiency or loss they may receive by you walking away!
You WILL be able to stay in your home for up to 8 months or more without having to pay anything to your lender!
You CAN have the foreclosure REMOVED from your credit!

that's quite a bold statement.

@cabalist: Wouldn't it be great if more americans were like that? If they all read all the fine print in their credit card offers, and would choose to spend time at the library instead of watching the latest episode of American Idol?

Right or wrong, that's reality that most people aren't that "diligent" as you put it. You and your holier than thou attitude aren't going to do a damn thing about that. Just like you can't do anything about people who have 7 kids with 7 different spouses and wonder why all they can afford is a big mac in front of the TV. Go ahead, go try to tell them how to parent, or better yet suggest that they should have taken a responsibility test (to *your* standards, of course!) to see if they can even procreate in the first place.

It would be best to hope for a government that has stricter regulations as to who can purchase a house. But ya know what that's called? FASCISM!

All of this is well and good.

In the end, people are walking away from their responsibilities (in so many ways) for their own benefit and it is hurting people who have "played it safe". I am not saying they are the only people getting hurt (the banks are getting hurt, the loan officers, people trying to get legitimate loans now that cannot, neighborhoods with empty homes, etc.). If a move harms innocents I cannot justify it. 'Well, it also hurts the mean ol' banks and corporations'--whatever.

It hurts innocent people as well. I'm sure these people will have no problem sleeping tonight.

Holier than thou. Hmmm, for not wanting to reward behavior that is detrimental to the economic fabric of our country?

And yeah, obviously stricter regulations, after the gang-busting success of the last bout of deregulation, is fascism. And making sure that everyone has a house is communism.

@cabalist: if you are considering morality when entering into a contract, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. the whole point of a contract is to bind the parties to the law. if both sides were noble & could be held to their word, you wouldn't need a contract w/ remedies & penalties would you?

the company that signs the mortgage contract w/ you pledges no such morality. their decision to lend to you is entirely a business decision. & so it should be with you, or anybody else.