“The trick is to get a short sale on another home before foreclose on the 1st house”
Lenders are well aware of this slime bag trick; it’s called buy and bail.
That is exactly what a friend’s daughter did...highly unethical. She had a lovely house on the California coast and owed $700,000 on it. She “rented” it out, and bought another house, which had been a $l million dollar house far superior to her, and she got it for a bit over $500,000. She then defaulted on house number l. Seems to me the bank could have come after her and put a lien on house number 2, but they never did. And I have read that a lot of these bank loans have been “bundled” and sold to others so many times that the deeds are lost, and homeowners can just quit paying and if the bank can’t produce the deed, the homeowners then own the house, no more payments necessary. (Dang...I paid cash for mine...and now it’s worth l/2 of what I paid.)