How To Stall Foreclosure And Live In Your House For Free

Richard Davet, an Ohio native, was able to stall the foreclosure process for 11 years without making a mortgage payment, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. How is this possible? Davet used various legal strategies to accomplish this feat, filling appeal after appeal and trying to expose loopholes in the system. His efforts made for quite the legal display, but he finally succumbed to the law and was removed from the house by the sheriff. Although he no longer lives in the house, he is still fighting to get his house back. You can read the article for more details on the efforts he was making.

After reading the article, the thought kept coming to my head was that, if this guy spent all that energy on something that could actually make him money, he could have afforded to pay his mortgage and none of this would have happened. He would still have his house, and a nice chunk of equity, making him better off. In addition, the bank would have saved a ton of money on legal fees, allowing them to loan that money to someone else, furthering the economy and so on.

I hope this story doesn’t inspire other people facing foreclosure to follow suit. Not only could such an attempt ultimately be bad for them, it would further harm banks, making life harder for people trying to get home loans. That, in turn, could lead to further punishment of the real estate market and of the economy overall.