This smart move has occured to me, oh, about 6 months ago but my husband thought I was nuts. Hey, can’t beat them, join them!

He couldn’t believe that the credit scores can be repaired so much so quickly. We have 800 credit scores so see, it wouldnt’ have affected us that badly.

But let’s say it’s a 500K-500K house, downpayment 25K (an FHA loan, perhaps)- that you lose if you get evicted. Let’s say P&I per month is in the range $2500-3000 – so if you don’t pay mortgage from day 1 you save 25K-35K a year. (you may still wanna pay prop tax and HOA). After 1 year is still a wash. And in the future they may hurry up the foreclosure process enough (under 1 year) to get rid of the freeloaders. There is no guarantee it will take them 3-4 years to kick you out. But perhaps then they can offer u a principal reduction/loan mod…then it’s pretty good…
Otherwise…too much trouble for too little money… Hey, the process of finding, bidding and buying a house costs more in terms of time than 20K IMHO….at least to me, it’s so no worth it (beside the (un)ethical aspect of course).