[mkjessup]

I wonder... if the bank won’t take your house back, what prevents you from just moving back in?

That's a good point. If you lose your house due to a failure to make the required payments, and the bank forecloses, you are considered to be in default and your mortgage agreement is null and void, as the bank has the major interest in the property as the primary lender, and the property is SUPPOSED to revert to them.

But if the bank does not proceed through foreclosure, it would seem to me that the bank is forfeiting it's own legal standing by it's failure to fully foreclose and take full possession of the property.

At that point it wouldn't be a legal stretch to consider the property effectively abandoned by both lender and borrower and (*SURPRISE*!!!) the city/county/state/feds swoop in and seize the property.

Viola! Private property vanishes, the State becomes the owner and can do with the property whatever it wishes.

There's something vaguely Communistic about this.

[Oberon]

At that point it wouldn't be a legal stretch to consider the property effectively abandoned by both lender and borrower and (*SURPRISE*!!!) the city/county/state/feds swoop in and seize the property.

Okay... but what if you pay the taxes? Not the mortgage, which is an agreement between you and your lender, but just the taxes? The city/county/state/feds wouldn't have any reason to sieze your property. In fact, you could potentially buy the place from the city for back taxes, and own it free and clear.