Janet Portman, an attorney and the managing editor at Nolo, a provider of legal information and products, offers these tips for renters to safeguard themselves beforehand or get justice after the fact:

--Look the landlord up in the court records to make sure he or she isn't already facing a foreclosure action on the property in question or other properties. The Maryland Judiciary Case Search lets you do that online.

--Ask to see the landlord's credit report. "Especially if you're going to pay several thousand dollars a month for a single-family home," Portman says. "If you look at someone's credit report, you're going to see how extended they are. Now, a lot of landlords are going to say, 'Heck no.' But if it's a soft market, you might get somewhere with that."

--Ask the landlord's lender for an agreement that if they foreclose, they won't evict you as long as you're not in default. Businesses renting commercial space do that all the time -- it's called a "subordination, attornment and nondisturbance" clause, Portman says. But this is the "platinum model for protecting yourself," as she puts it, because you're going to have to really work to get a residential lender to agree, and you'd probably need to hire a lawyer.

--Remember that you can take the landlord to court if you get evicted because he or she gets foreclosed on. "There's no reason you can't sue that person in small claims court for moving costs and everything else" for failure to make the home available for the period specified in the lease, Portman says.

On the flip side, sometimes landlords go into foreclosure because their renters aren't paying, not because they've overextended themselves. I interviewed a real estate investor last year who couldn't juggle the mortgage payments on his handful of properties because he kept having renter problems.