My neighbors abandoned their home...

I found out a couple weeks ago that one of our neighbors abandoned their home. The rumor was that they might have had one of those 3 year ARM loans when they bought the property and either they could not refinance or the husband might have lost his job... Nobody knows what happened to the family. All we know is one night, there was a truck on their driveway and they were loading their belongings and nobody saw them since then. Nobody knows where they are. I am sure there must be a reason why they had to leave, but how do they explain to their teenage kids what they are doing.... I wonder why they did not try to do a short sale when they were behind in one or two mortgage payments or why they didn't file for bankruptcy? Why did they run away? There are so many 'whys'... I wonder how long it would take for the property to be on the market as REO...?

I know there will be more and more short sales coming up. I took a short sale class a couple of days ago and the instructor said the mortgage payments could go up by 6 times after the 3 year ARM is over. I hope any home owners who are at risk of losing their homes will contact a real estate professional (especially a short sale specialist), real estate attorney or a loan officer and see if they can get help. We are here to help.