Perhaps the most searing image of the housing crisis is that of the "walk away"—homeowners, crushed by the burden of a mortgage much greater than the value of their house, who just walk away and abandon their homes.

Break the mortgage contract. Put the keys in the mail. See ya!

This behavior has been highlighted on 60 Minutes: A couple was shown ready to abandon their $350,000 two-bedroom home. It has also been noted by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. And on Capitol Hill, Senator Barack Obama cited walk aways in introducing legislation intended to tackle the larger housing crisis.

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Yet even as the housing market slumps and the number of foreclosures rises, the idea that there has been a spike in walk aways across the nation may be more rhetorical than real.

Walk aways "are not going to be anywhere near as large as most people think," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. "Lenders are not going to forget about you."

Homeowners whose homes are "underwater"—worth less than their mortgages—are more likely to be deed the properties back to lenders rather than cutting off all ties and walking away, said Rick Sharga, vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac, a foreclosure-data provider.

"There is less of a blatant walk away and more of a hand-shake deal between the lenders and the homeowners," Sharga said. In these cases, known as deeds in lieu of foreclosure, the lender takes possession of the property and has no further recourse to go after lost funds. This arrangement, while still not ideal for banks, is less costly than going through the foreclosure process.

Lenders do not keep track of the number of people who have abandoned their homes, so there is no clear data on how widespread the problem may be.

The motivation for abandoning a home happens when borrowers can no longer afford their mortgage payments and the value of their homes are underwater. By the end of June, Moody's Economy.com estimates that 10.6 million homeowners will have zero or negative equity. If the mortgage lender is simply going to foreclose on the home anyway, the credit hit from a foreclosure is seen as being less painful than one from bankruptcy.

As a result, a number of websites have popped up in recent months to cash in on this growing number of underwater homeowners by offering services to assist in the walk-away process. According to the owners of these sites, there is no shortage of customers.  

"The business is great and we're looking to expand. It's been pretty phenomenal," said Phillip Bellante, co-founder of San Diego-based HomeFreeMe.com.

To be sure, walking away is quite unneighborly. An abandoned home is at risk of vandalism and falling into decrepitude, meaning that the value of properties next to it will also take a hit. Not only is walking away selfish, it's also damaging.  

And assuming that your credit score won't experience severe harm from walking away is a naive view, based on the assumption that "lenders do not or will not modify their behavior," said Glenn Schultz, head of nonconforming mortgage research at Wachovia.

The immensity of the real estate meltdown all but guarantees that banks will protect themselves from getting burned in the future.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation's largest mortgage lenders, have already started to work on limiting incentives for walking away. In March, Fannie Mae announced that foreclosed borrowers won't be able to get a mortgage from the lender for five years, and Freddie Mac said that foreclosures would count against the potential borrowers for seven years.

Schultz also expects Fair Isaac, the firm that developed the FICO score used by mortgage lenders to gauge a borrower's credit worthiness, to seriously reconsider how it measures abandoning a mortgage into its score.

So who exactly are the mortgage walkers?

Homeowners that analysts believe are most likely to cut their losses are those who took out subprime loans on investment properties. That group accounted for 5.3 percent of subprime loans originated in 2006 and 2007, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. This translates into roughly a little under 250,000 homes. The speculators most likely to dump houses are also ones who saw the biggest price drops, bringing this at-risk number down even more.

As for the rapidly growing websites, they also have the advantage of starting from a low base. The actual number of clients they've reported is still tiny: HomeFreeMe has had about 80 clients since launching in February, and Carlsbad, California-based YouWalkAway.com has served about 200.

For his part, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly held a meeting with top lenders and servicers last week and urged them to come up with a plan to help underwater borrowers. (Paulson was also said to express his frustration over the lack of granular data on these borrowers.)

The lesson here is that as banks and federal officials work to reduce incentives for walking away, and as lenders become more willing to negotiate with delinquent borrowers, there is a good chance that we've already seen the worst of the walk aways.