Buying cheap houses

I always bought cheap housing that didn't put a strain on my budget.

My cousin lost his house when he decided to buy a nice suburban house, and when laid off couldn't keep up the payments in the 1950's...
similarly, when I left private practice I had to quit claim my office and rent out my house for five years...thanks to the bad housing market of Jimmy Carter with it's high interest rates and a major recession in our area. The bank told me that they had dozens of unsold "Quitclaim" houses on their hands when I left town.

Yet a lot of people bought and resold houses to make a profit in good times.

So I AGREE when VDHanson asks:
We are told hourly that millions of Americans have lost their homes, rarely that 94% of home debtors continue to pay their monthly mortgages.

And there is almost no information given on how or why those who defaulted walked away?

Did at least a few buy a house who had no business taking on a mortgage? Did at least some wish to speculate, buy property, flip it, and profit in a perceived permanently bullish housing market?

Did some others take out second and third mortgages to expand their consumer spending and hope to make it deductible on their income taxes?

Did others still simply make a business decision to walk away from a freely incurred debt that proved larger than the falling equity in their homes?

I haven't read any of this information either...probably it is somewhere, but not on the main pages that I get with my RSS feeds of major newspapers.