Recourse versus non-recourse mortgages is an interesting difference that most people seem to be unaware of. I do not recall reading about it in any of the disclosures (running hundreds of pages) that I had to read. I only found out about it while researching on the internet.

Apparently, there are only 10 non-recourse states as of 2009: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. The tricky thing is that only the initial mortgage is non-recourse. A refinanced mortgage becomes recourse, but interestingly, they don't seem to be required to disclose that in the disclosures.