Q. Is it an offense to buy a less expensive house and then short sale or foreclose the current one?

A. No. It's not an offense, if you mean, "Is it illegal? Will they throw me in jail?"

But is it right? Or smart? Those are tougher questions.

"Buy and bail," as this practice has come to be known, is the latest -- and strangest -- twist on the mortgage crisis.

It works something like this: Consumers with good credit find themselves upside-down on their homes because property values have fallen so much that they now owe far more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

They take out a new mortgage to buy a second home, usually a less expensive one. In extreme cases, it could be a virtually identical home in the same neighborhood that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what they paid for their first home.

The borrower then moves into the second home, stops making payments on the first home and allows it to fall into foreclosure.

"It's just a business decision," Linda Caoili, a Sacramento real estate agent who encourages the practice, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "If you're upside-down $250,000, why would you keep it? It just doesn't make sense." (You can find that story here.)

But lenders consider "buy and bail" to be nothing short of mortgage fraud. There's nothing in any loan agreement that says it's OK to walk away from your mortgage just because the home became a bad investment.

They're responding with new rules that will make it tougher to borrow money for a second home, especially in those parts of the country where home prices have fallen the most.

We can't imagine any lender would approve a short sale on your first home if it knows you just bought a second home.

It's difficult enough to get banks and mortgage companies to accept a short sale when borrowers are in legitimate financial trouble. They aren't going to graciously lose money to help a borrower "buy and bail."

So should you do it?

Here's how we look at it -- and this is purely our opinion.

No. Not if you can afford the payments on your current home.

It's morally wrong to default on a debt just because you don't want to repay it. You'll probably have to lie about your plans sometime during the "buy and bail" process. Is this something you'll be proud to tell your kids about?

A foreclosure will wreak havoc on your credit history and score for the next seven to 10 years. You'll have a difficult, if not impossible, time qualifying for car loans and credit cards. You could even be turned down for a new job or promotion because some employers routinely review credit histories when filling positions.

You could be sued for damages. Banks and mortgage companies almost never pursue borrowers who lose their homes because they can't afford the payments. But lenders will take a much harder look at anyone who deliberately walks away from a loan they can afford -- and the more assets you have, the more likely they are to drag you into a lengthy and costly lawsuit.

If you can't afford the payments on your home because of a costly adjustable-rate mortgage, that's another issue. See our advice on how to avoid foreclosure and when to walk away from your home.