YouWalkingAway.com: Helping Homeowners Facing Foreclosure Another Choice?

On Wednesday January 30th I read an excellent post by Jillayne Schlicke on Rain City Guide titled: If You Walk Away, I'll Walk Away about a new company called YouWalkAway.com.  The post quickly generated many comments from regular readers discussing this new company which opened for business January 1, 2008.  Jillayne provided several very good links to offer distressed homeowners alternative ways of working through their difficulties rather than going through this new company.

Later that evening I saw that ABC's Nightline was doing a story about homeowners thinking about walking away from their mortgages and the new company ( YouWalkAway.com ) promising to help these distressed homeowners, I made sure that I watched the report.  

It was very sad to see the helplessness of the homeowners who are facing foreclosure, and are up against a wall.  Then watching the spokesperson (owner?) of YouWalkAway.com talking about the company's objective for helping homeowners who are loosing their homes to foreclosure.  The spokesperson made some good points that the mortgage companies were the ones who offered these risky mortgages, they were the ones educated on the risks and still made the loans to people who were much less financially savvy than the lenders.  I can see why some (many?) homeowners would want to take this route.

While I don't like the idea of a company spreading the word, and profiting from it, about just walking away from a financial obligation, perhaps this will allow homeowners to have some leverage to negotiate with lenders to work out a plan for the homeowner to pay on a new, affordable mortgage rather than just "Walking Away"....