From Elizabeth Weintraub,
Your Guide to Home Buying / Selling.
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Definition: Jingle mail is a phrase used to describe the envelopes containing house keys, which are mailed by homeowners to mortgage lenders, without authorization from the lender. The keys jingle-jangle in the envelope; hence the name. Home owners decide to mail the house keys to the lender because the owners believe their home is no longer worth keeping, and they want to give the home to the lender.

Why Send Jingle Mail?

Here are reasons why a home owner might decide to mail the keys to the lender:

• The owners believe they should walkaway from a home when its value drops below that of their mortgage.
• The owners can no longer make the mortgage payment.
• Short sale denial by bank.

Do Lenders Want Jingle Mail?

Do lenders want the house keys? For starters, I imagine most home owners send the keys to the address used for mortgage payments and not to the bank's REO department. So, the keys are probably lost or thrown out.

Even if the right entity should somehow end up with the keys, the locks will be changed and, in some neighborhoods, the front door bolted.

Home owners should save their postage. Rates keep going up, you know.

Also Known As: foreclosure keys, repossession, walkaway

Common Misspellings: jangle mail

Examples: Jody thought she was doing the right thing when she slipped her house keys into the envelope addressed to her bank. The biggest problem facing Jody at that moment was how to get the remote for the garage door opener to fit into that small envelope.