Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

If the lender elects foreclosure (as most people use that term, meaning a trustee's sale under the deed of trust) the lender waives any right to go after anyone for money. They get what they get by foreclosing and that is all they get. It is called the "one form of action rule." 99.9% of foreclosures in California are done by trustees' sales under the deeds of trust. If, for some reason, you were to fall into that very rare 0.1% of cases, where the lender actually elects to sue on the debt and include a judicial foreclosure in the lawsuit, things get a LOT more complicated and you would have to sit down with a lawyer and go over the details of the situation to get the answer. That 0.1%, however, pretty much invariably involves fraud or other malfeasance by the borrower AND property that is worth WAY less than the debt AND a borrower who has substantial other assets. So unless you fall into that category, the odds of a foreclosure lawsuit rather than a trustee's sale are virtually nil.