Take your blood-pressure meds, Bobby, it's another Victims of the Housing Crisis story

"He called his lender last fall hoping for a hardship consideration and asking for a two-month postponement of his mortgage payments. He wanted to have them added to the end of his mortgage. Mobley says his credit rating was excellent, and he was merely trying to free up some cash for the holidays." (Now, perhaps this fellow is too proud to admit he needs the money, so he minimizes his situation by calling it "cash for the holidays," but, please, people, children read these stories and learn by example. Freeing up cash for the holidays is NOT a good reason to ask your lender to incur the expense of processing a loan modification.)

CNNMoney.com has a story about how Tough it is to get a mortgage loan modification. They have the hard-luck cases, like the fellow paralyzed in an accident who can't get a mortgage workout (the article didn't say whether the friend helping out had power of attorney or any other legal status to represent the homeowner - could the problem be a lack of authority for a mere friend to negotiate a loan workout?). They have the real estate agent, who just wants to keep her house of 15 years (okay, not to be cynical, but did they really have half-million-dollar homes in Las Vegas 15 years ago, that would only be worth $350k today?) They have the pitiful retiree, his equity locked in a rental property with an ARM that reset so that the payment is higher than his rental income (I know, it happens, but a retiree who can't afford the potential payment increase should get a fixed-rate loan or sell the house before it's a problem).

Then they have this guy:

But when it came to obtaining a mortgage workout, he wasn't getting anywhere -- even after months of trying. He finally wrote a letter to the president of his lender to try to resolve the issue.
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After that, however, and after he was asked to send in all his paperwork for the fifth time, he didn't hear from them again for six months. Then, recently, he finally got a call back with a loan workout offer.

The lender offered an extremely low rate, 2.8%, which sounded great.

The problem was the value of his property has dropped from $840,000 to about $620,000 and the lender would do nothing to reduce the mortgage balance. Nash believed he would be upside-down on his mortgage, owing more than the house was worth, for years.
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He looked around town and decided he could walk away from his house and rent another comparable place for half of what he would be paying his bank just for the mortgage payment.

He loves his house but he's choosing to give it up rather than shackle himself to a bad investment for years.

That's okay, Grandma, I know your supposedly-safe conservative retirement portfolio of bank stocks is worthless now, but at least you have the comfort of knowing that you're living on cat food for a good cause. We wouldn't want poor Kenny to go without cash for the holidays, and we surely wouldn't want poor Ronny to be "shackled to a bad investment for years".