It depends on how much equity you have in your home.
Scenario 1: Your home is worth $100K, and your current mortgage is for $100K (or more which means you are underwater.) In this case you can't get a 2nd mortgage because:
- It's not legal to use the same collateral (e.g. some or all of your house) for multiple loans without all parties knowing about it.
- If you let the parties know, then whoever is not first in line to receive the collateral certainly won't agree to it, since the collateral is not yours to use. (The existing mortgage would already have legal claim to it.)
- You couldn't do it even if you tried because any real bank will do a title search to discover if you are trying to do this, before giving you any money.
That being said, you can use different portions of equity in your home as collateral for multiple mortgages, as long as none of the equity overlaps, but you may need permission from the primary mortgage bank first, for example:
Scenario 2: Your home is worth $100K, and your current mortgage is for $80K meaning you currently have $20K in equity. It is possible to get a 2nd mortgage or home equity line of credit for $20K.
As a side note, if your loan agent is telling you to use a different bank, it sounds like she is trying (and willing) to do something shady. If you are in Scenario 1, I'd find a new agent.