Simple answer is that the property had other liens that would not have been cleared making this a losing proposition. Just look at the plaintiffs, they were a private party, not a big bank. So this tells me this was not a first position mortgage, and there's another large mortgage here.

If you are interested in findining out, you can easily pull up the encumberances on the property using the clerk of courts, use this article on how to do your own title search to see how. I bet there's a big 1st mortgage sitting there among other stuff.