LOS ANGELES, May 11 (Xinhua) -- More and more homeowners in the United States are contemplating walking away from affordable mortgages as the economic downturn is deepening, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
Bankers and housing analysts say many homeowners, owing more than their homes are worth, are defaulting on their loans even when they can afford payments, according to the paper.
But there were no hard numbers to back up the claims, said the report.
"It's a way of saying that Americans are beginning to apply a cold financial calculation to home ownership: When a home's value has fallen below what is owed on its mortgage, they feel it makes no sense to keep up the payments," said the report.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson had waggled a stern finger at homeowners contemplating walking away from affordable mortgages: Do that, and you're no better than a "speculator," he said.
Elsewhere, media reports and Internet postings are rife with stories about the trend and a supposed sea change in American attitudes toward debt.
But there's a major problem with all this talk about the phenomenon of solvent homeowners "walking away": There does not appear to be any hard evidence that it is actually happening, said the report.
When pressed for the number of borrowers who could afford their mortgage payments, major banks and lender groups could not produce numbers figures, the report said.
John Mechem, spokesman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said he believed that walkaways by homeowners who could afford their payments were "becoming more prevalent." But he said that was based on "anecdotes we're hearing from our members and what we're reading in the newspapers."
Bank of America spokesman Terry Francisco told The Times that the bank had seen indications that some homeowners were taking pains to keep their credit card accounts current at the expense of their mortgage balances, often by raiding their home equity lines to pay their cards, a reversal of traditional customary customer priorities.
But he said the bank did not have "firm figures" on how many homeowners were unnecessarily defaulting on their mortgages.
"We are working hard with our analytics to get at how much that is happening," Francisco said. Others suggest that it may be impossible to find out.
