> I don't have any failed startups, but I have missed plenty of bills, including going more than a year without paying a mortgage before short selling the house.
Doesn't your house get repossessed if you do this, and you end up with nothing? I accept I may be wrong here, but I've been told the above a thousand times.
> Doesn't your house get repossessed if you do this, and you end up with nothing?
Foreclosure is a long and expensive process and can result in very bad deals for the lender. Particularly during and in a fairly long shadow after the Great Recession, lenders were very reluctant to pull the trigger on that if they believed they could get a better resolution, and for most of the time I wasn't paying I was in the process of trying to get the bank to approve the short sale (had a potential buyer lined up.) Also, had located and, during the time in question, moved into a rental with an independent landlord and no management company who was more-than-typically flexible in assessing credit, so wasn't dependent on having the house. (Because of the same changed market conditions that left the first home loan underwater, the rental of a larger home in a better neighborhood was also less than the mortgage on the underwater one.)
Yes, though, foreclosure was a risk, but in a no-recourse state with an underwater loan being left “with nothing” is better from a narrow financial perspective (potentially worse for other reasons without alternate housing arranged, given how credit can effect that) than having the house and mortgage,
Doesn't your house get repossessed if you do this, and you end up with nothing? I accept I may be wrong here, but I've been told the above a thousand times.