Almost half of lenders believe that strategic defaults will increase in 2012, a specter that continues to affect national housing policy. There are no reliable data regarding strategic defaults in the U.S., considering the secrecy inherent in the act. That has forced policymakers to make dollars-and-cents decisions based on conjecture about borrower behavior. A new FICO survey found that 46 percent of bank risk professionals expect the number of strategic defaults in 2012 to surpass those in 2011. Survey participants had a generally pessimistic view of homeowners’ regard for their mortgage...