Anyone who has lived in a house for 4 - 6 years without paying a mortgage, or taxes, or insurance on it ought to have a really nice nest egg for moving and starting over.
If they played it right, and kept the house well maintained, a homeowner could have gone the HAMP route, and started fresh, by recapitalizing back taxes and insurance. Loan servicers push for recapitalizing missed payments, but that's not a requirement.
I saw some really sweet deals go down during the bank crisis. My coworkers and I remarked constantly that we wish we could have availed ourselves of the programs, in addition to the "nest egg" from not paying a monthly mortgage payment for 3+ years.
You have to stand your ground with these mortgage servicing companies. We constantly had battles over the way they were dealing with delinquent homeowners. It got to the point where they were stripped of the vast majority of their delegated authority.