Not necessarily. We tried to buy a short-sale house several years ago and the owner got the bank to sign away their need to pay the difference. After waiting a year, we still didn’t get the house because the bank holding the second mortgage wouldn’t accept a similar deal. I would NEVER ever again bid on a short sale.
Short sales are a joke. The banks often take so long to realize that they need to stem their losses NOW, vs haggling into the future. Went through all the ways to buy a cheap home, tried REO's, Shortsales, Foreclosures, and then I finally scored by going downtown and purchasing a house at auction. Not for the faint of heart.
I owe nothing on this house, except taxes and insurance, and my payments are very, very low. My sister, who is of similar means in a town 90 minutes away, pays something like $3000 per month on her just purchased home. I have another sister who re-fi'd her house to add improvements, but now she is upside down by hundreds of thousands. I must say that it is tempting for them to just walk away and start over, do something like I did.