Can I be evicted if my landlord's proprety is foreclosed on?

Take a deep breath. Things are not good, but also not as bad as you may be imagining. First, defaulting on mortgage sets the stage for the property to be foreclosed on, or taken over by the lender; however, it doesn’t happen automatically. Instead, foreclosure is a legal proceeding, so it takes some time; and it may not even begin right away, since the bank may first try to work something out with the defaulting owner. So you probably have a few weeks, possibly a few months, before the property is foreclosed. (Note: until the foreclosure actually happens, your landlord is still your landlord; you need to keep paying him the rent, or else you risk violating your lease and having the landlord evict you.)

Second, once the property is foreclosed on, that will terminate your lease and the new owner—the bank, or anyone who buys the property in a foreclosure sale or auction—can evict you. But they cannot simply lock you out because you have foreclosure eviction rights. Instead, they have to follow the proper procedure, which in FL starts with a foreclosure eviction notice, called a “three-day notice.”

Third, even when there’s a foreclosure eviction proceeding, you have rights. You have process rights, for example—eviction is highly “technical” and if the new owner goes about it the wrong way, you can challenge the eviction and they’ll have to start over. More importantly, in spring 2009, President Obama signed a law giving tenant’s considerable rights in cases of foreclosure. If you have a lease, you can generally stay through to the end of the term under this new law (unless the new owner intends to live there him- or herself, in which case, you’ll still get 90 days). Even if you didn’t have a lease (a month-to-month renter), you’d get 90 days before having to leave.

There is no way to stop foreclosure eviction for good—though you of course could try to negotiate a lease with the new owner!—but between the requirements that the process be followed properly and the law allowing tenants to stay on in foreclosed properties for at least 90 days, you’ll probably have several months before having to leave. That means that while you should probably start looking for a new situation now, you at least have time for a measured transition to a new living situation.