It is usually up to the lending institution to decide what to do with property that a mortgager was unable to pay for. In rare cases, the lender might actually use the property and incorporate it as among its directly used assets. However, in most cases,  foreclosure  is the more common result. This means that the property will be sold according to whatever value is determined. Of course, this will always be bad for the mortgager and perhaps the only way they could get their property back is to buy the property outright, which in the vast majority of cases would be quite unrealistic