It could have been a short sale which does not damage your credit as much. Also the house could have been purchased on the dads credit while the condo was purchased on the moms. Another possibility, it's semi-common in South Florida to "rent to own" in condo type communities, they are usually on bad terms but you don't need to go the normal bank route. There are ways it could happen, though it does strike me as odd the way it was phrased.

Source: While I live in the valley now I grew up in Miami and still own a house there.

Yes, technically an apartment is rented and a condo is owned, but I have met plenty of people who use the terms interchangeably.

Which does kind of make sense, considering they are in all other regards the exact same thing.

In New York, it's standard to "buy an apartment." The NYT uses that construction all the time in its real estate articles.

I have been following this thread with interest (accidental pun). Where I am (New Zealand) the term apartment doesn't mean anything in relationship to ownership either. It could be leased, owned, rented or whatever. Edit: using everyone's favourite source the world apartment has different meaning in different regions - broadly the term 'flat' is a better fit with British (maybe even non-US?) readers, though with NZ being an exception, despite our usual English centric approach to language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment

A condo would be strange as well, why would (how could) they have purchased another place so soon after having their previous place foreclosed upon.

I thought so too, but it's possible they were living in an expensive house and they got some money back from it and bought a cheaper place. Maybe, I don't know that much about the whole foreclosure process but I know of someone that did something similar.