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I wonder what percentage of foreclosed homeowners completely destory their houses before moving out. I've seen a few of these places and they are not pretty. One realtor told me flat out that, due to the condition of the house (courtesy of the ex owner) only cash offers were being acepted (no bank would lend for such a crummy house).

Family in my neighborhood has spent over 24 months living free and that's this time. And it's not that they didn't have another place to go to. They'd arranged for a rent-to-own with the guy doing the necessary plumbing and electrical as the down payment, this was back in 2/2009. And would you believe that those repairs have taken this long? Yep. The bank finally foreclosed on the current house last spring. The wife then calls the bank and asks for additional time. The bank lets it go another five months before serving eviction papers. The wife ITMT is bragging that as long as they don't move to the other house, they don't have to pay anything there and that they're not paying anything in the current (foreclosed) house so...what did they do? They bought a fifth car. And this is the second trip down this road, the first being in the mid-90s which was also a rent-to-own that was eventually foreclosed on. Whereupon they came to this neighborhood in a rent-to-own, never fixed the place up, now foreclosed. And now they're going to their third rent-to-own.

A friend of mine who's a collector said that her company is getting geared up to bid on the balance due on houses after short sales. I don't know any more than that. Perhaps someone else does.

HousingWatcher says

I wonder what percentage of foreclosed homeowners completely destory their houses before moving out. I’ve seen a few of these places and they are not pretty. One realtor told me flat out that, due to the condition of the house (courtesy of the ex owner) only cash offers were being acepted (no bank would lend for such a crummy house).

There is a point where the house is more of a liability than a benefit to the property. When it's good for nothing than a tear down and using the land for something else, it cost money to demolish a building, haul away the debris and pay the landfill fees.

seaside says

... We used to consider breaking oath/contract/promise as inhonorable shame. But do we think the same way now? Bankruptcy, devorce, foreclosure, etc was a shame but not any more in current society.

America has degraded into a what's good for me screw everyone else society. The worse thing is politicians are rewarding this type of behavior. They removed the IRS taxes on bank foreclosure write offs, all kinds of government programs to stop, prevent or slow down the foreclosure process and bailed out financial institutions that took way too much risk. Sure there are people out there that lost there jobs and can't afford to make there fixed mortgage payments, but the bulk of the foreclosures are people who took out interest only, teaser rate, adjustable, sub-prime mortgages and this isn't such a good investment after all lets just walk away types.