Sharga chalks up the increase in strategic defaults (or at least the willingness to consider them) to two major factors: a new type of unemployed homeowner and a lack of trust in lending institutions.

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There are a growing number of strategic home defaults, deemed such when home buyers who can afford the mortgage payments choose to default because their homes are worth less than their mortgages Morgan Stanley estimates that 12% of defaults in February is from this category.

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During the Great Recession, 26% of existing defaults were strategic, a July 2009 National Bureau of Economic Research paper revealed, and people who knew others that defaulted were 82% likely to do the same.

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