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The 13 lots involved in this quiet title action are part of a residential subdivision. These lots were successively the subject of a set of purchase money trust deeds and a set of construction money trust deeds. The earlier group of trust deeds secured purchase money loans of $806.45 per lot. All were recorded on August 21, 1959. All contained subordination provisions. D was the lender of construction funds. Over a year later, the owners took out construction loans approximating $11,000 to $12,000 a lot. The owners gave D instalment notes with principal and interest payable at the rate of $86 per month. These notes included a due-on-sale clause, giving the holder an option to accelerate maturity upon any sale by the borrower. Before making the construction loans, D issued escrow instructions to Yuba County Title Company, stating: 'Please secure subordination.' The title company refused to issue insurance covering D's trust deeds unless it received additional subordination agreements from the trustee of the purchase money trust deeds. D withdrew the escrow from Yuba County Title Company, and another title company became the escrow depositary. D then made the construction loans, and its deeds of trust were recorded. No subordination agreements were executed, other than those contained in the purchase money trust deeds. Homes were built, and the purchase money, loans, and construction loans became delinquent. P bought up the defaulted purchase money notes and commenced the sale of individual parcels. P bid on the lots at the sales. D commenced sale proceedings under the construction money trust deeds and recorded notices of default against 11 of the lots. D bid in these 11 lots at a sale held by its own trustee. Six of these were the lots which had already been sold to P at sales held by his own trustee. The other five had not yet been foreclosed by P, and as to these, the sales to D preceded the sales to P under the purchase money trust deeds. The remaining two lots were the subject of sales to P in April 1962 and to Sacramento Savings in November 1962. Both the timing of the various trustees' sales overlapped, and so did the recordation of notices of default and notices of sale. Neither party chose to bid at any of the other's sales. Neither chose to exercise a junior lienor's right to reinstate the senior loan after the latter had become delinquent. D asserts priority of its construction money trust deeds on the theory that the subordination provision of the earlier trust deeds (fn. 1, supra) operated automatically for the benefit of the construction lender, requiring no separate subordination document. It also claims equitable seniority, urging that equity will impose a subordinating lien to carry out the parties' intent, although their contract language may fall short. The trial court ruled for P, and D appealed.

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