[Someone]

In the Netherlands, law (dis)agrees with you.

Disagrees: Banks are obliged to make a honest effort of preventing that from happening.

Agrees: another way to look at that is that, alongside the mortgage, banks do give financial advice. Part of that is answering the question "can I afford this?". If they ignore that, you could call that "lying or otherwise being fraudulent".

[SoftwareMaven]

As I said elsewhere, if the bank lies to you, they are certainly culpable. In the US, there are standardized forms that must be filled out that are supposed to give you all the "true costs" of a loan.

Beyond, that, though (and recognizing laws might differ), the bank is obligated to tell you what you "qualify" for, which may be drastically different than what you can afford.

The real grey area is in the tricks they can play with loans, and this is the point where "buyer beware" can certainly turn into "hang the SoB", depending on the behavior of the bank.