Most people don't understand that a bank or mortgage lender can forclose on you at anytime, even if all your payments are on time. If the lender feels that the risks are rising, such as a substantial rise in unemployment in your area, they might just forclose your home. This is because the fear that home prices in your area may become depressed and they don't want to be stuck with the home if you lose your job in the future.

>If this is true, then paying on a mortgage is really the same as rent -- you can be evicted at any time -- then it would make sense to treat a mortgage that way and postpone the day of reckoning

Absolutely. When you have a mortgage, the lender owns the home until you pay off the mortgage. I find it ironic that most people consider their home, their biggest asset that they don't really own.

> In any case, what would it mean to "pay off your mortgage" if the government causes hyperinflation and then raises property taxes to unsustainable levels?  You lose your property anyway.

In hyperinflation, wages rise on a daily basis to adjust for it. If property taxes or other taxes are impossed to the extent that people can't afford it, then it would trigger deflation. Imagine what happens when millions of home owners turn in their keys to the lender. It would cause massive unemployment and cripple the economy.

However I don't subscribed that hyperinflation will happen. If the gov't was to start printing money, every lender would immediate impose draconan interest rates. Japan for instance has tried a similar tactic and they still  remained in a state of deflation for about 20 years.