We added another house to our retirement portfolio...not by choice. We buy non-performing mortgages from banks and get the borrowers into a new repayment plan that maybe is more affordable than what they currently owed. We send the necessary notification to the borrowers letting them know that we are the new bank that owns their loan with all of our contact info and usually don't hear from them. Which leads us to contacting an attorney in that state and let them send notices that starts the ball rolling with a demand letter with maybe 60 days to respond or the house will go into foreclosure. We send this type of letter to get the borrower to wake up. We don't want their house and give them clear options to get this all worked out. Very rarely does this go all the way to foreclosure, and we let the attorneys know up front that if we do go all the way, we both failed to communicate correctly. Well this one started off rough and downhill it went. It started with the borrowers attorney 20 years ago advising the borrowers to file for bankruptcy to avoid this 2nd mortgage. This attorney told these people that they didn't need to worry about this mortgage as it would "Go Away". The borrowers believed this and years later we end up with this debt. We see this quite often and most people realize they have been ill-advised and come to reality. Imagine if this were actually true? I don't think another bank would write a 2nd mortgage again! Sad but true