First Interstate Bank of Arizona, N.A. v. Tatum & Bell Center Associates

OPINION

FIDEL, Presiding Judge.

When property is sold at a trustee’s sale for a price too low to relieve the debt that it secures, the lender may sue the borrower for the deficiency. The borrower, however, is statutorily credited with the property’s fair market value if the trustee’s sale has brought a lesser sum. This fair market value credit serves to protect the borrower against a deficiency artificially inflated by a deflated trustee’s sale.

Guarantors as well as borrowers are extended a fair market value credit under the express terms of Arizona’s current deficiency statute,…