[anonymousJim12]

One scenario like this played out after the mortgage crisis in 2008. Many banks now owned homes where the mortgage amount was greater than the market value, ie underwater. There was a ton of bank owned inventory for a long time because a) They are banks, not real estate companies with all of the expertise in marketing and transacting single family homes in bulk b) the market for homes significantly shrunk in the years after 2008.

In hot markets sure, maybe a bank might see a default and repossession as a good thing, but I doubt they are optimizing for those scenarios.

[wavefunction]

Everybody would have been better served by allowing the defaulting owners to remain in the homes under some sort of managed process until they could start making mortgage payments. Or restructuring the mortgages. Instead as you point out these banks were suddenly residential real-estate owners with no existing property-management capabilities and many of these already underwater properties lost further value due to neglect.

[vonmoltke]

A foreclosure is never a good thing for whomever holds the loan.