Sub-prime lending is spreading across the United States, especially in the booming housing markets of Southern California, Florida, Washington, DC, and New York City.
One in five US mortgages now falls in this category.
There have already been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates by the US Congress's Joint Economic Committee.
MY COMMENT:
To put borrowing money for buying a home as investment into perspective, consider that in the beginning of the nineteenth century US banks normally did not offer mortgages for private residences because they were bad risks.
(Can't remember the source of this one.)
