This method of delaying a foreclosure has been reported some time ago, and a very few people have been successful in obtaining clear ownership (with debt dissolved); but in the best of cases it has taken 5 to 15 years to get from the first notice of foreclosure to a final resolution. Most of the "resolved" cases tended toward the high end of that time span. In most US states, no foreclosure process can be started until the buyer is at least 90 days delinquent, and the foreclosure itself takes a fairly long time after first notice (up to a year in some places). It is likely that during the process one or more eviction notices will be filed, requiring contesting with uncertain success in each case.

Although the tactic has been used successfully, it has also been unsuccessful in a number of cases (and in other jurisdictions); and if it fails the buyer may have several years of "late charges and penalties" added to the original mortgage burden, on top of living under threat during the entire period that the case is in process.

This is a possible tactic to be considered only in the absence of any other viable resolution. The problem is that for many people recently, there have been very few other "viable" resolutions to their situations. For a majority of overwhelmed buyers, bankruptcy likely would be a cheaper and less stressful approach.

When the method was first reported ( I first saw it more than a year ago), there were a very few attorneys who were taking this approach at low or no fees to the buyer. The encreasing popularity(?) of the method implies that later entrants into the "selling" of the method must be making significant profit from taking clients, and hence that the "profit" to the home buyer from even a successful attempt must be decreasing.

John