Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Yes, for possession of the premises.

Well, the new owner can sue the occupants for possession. If the new owner is the bank, and the house was/is occupied by the now-former owner, then it follows that the bank can sue the homeowner after the fact.

However, I think you probably are asking whether the foreclosing lender can go after the borrower for any shortfall between what the lender is owed and what the foreclosure sale brings.

The answer can be yes or no, depending upon the nature of the loan and the method of foreclosure used. If the foreclosure were conducted by trustee's sale, the answer is no, with an exception described below. If the loan being foreclosed was a purchase-money loan for an owner-occupied home, the answer is also no, with the same exception.

If the loan being foreclosed was a refinancing, and the lender goes to court to foreclose rather than using a trustee sale, the answer is yes, the lender can also ask for and receive a judgment for the deficiency.

Now, here's the exception: A lender can also sue the borrower for something other than the deficiency on the loan itself. For example, the lender can sue the borrower for fraud if there are big black lies on the loan application. The lender can also sue for what is called "waste," meaning failure to preserve the value of the collateral by, for example, not repairing leaky plumbing that allowed major damage to occur over time, failure to keep the property taxes current, or logging off the landscape trees and selling them to the sawmill a week before the foreclosure sale.

We don't see a lot of aggressive suit-filing by lenders against average foreclosed homeowners, but lenders do come after a few who either have behaved badly (waste, fraud) or who have deep pockets and lots of other assets.