Paying sellers mortgage while you flip their home??

[James Bynum]

I have been thinking about this later and searched a little for this and found nothing. Could this be a way to flip a home with little money invested?

My idea is this. You find a seller that has say $50,000 left on their mortgage for a house that could be worth $150,000 after a pretty extensive rehab, right now the home is probably worth $70,000. Would it be legally possible (both not getting in trouble for doing it and the seller couldn't screw you over once the home was rehabbed) to offer to take over all the payments of the home during the rehab so in essence the seller can pretty much walk away from the property at that point, even though the mortgage would still be in their name, you would just be cutting the check for it. And then once the home is flipped and sold you could give the seller a percentage of the profit from the sale.

I feel like some sellers might like this idea as they could potentially get more money than they would have gotten if the flipper had just purchased the home or sent the home through a short sale and gotten it cheaper. Yet the flipper doesn't have to make a huge investment to get the home, just has to finance the flip.

Am I crazy, or could this actually work?