WaPo: Three Part Series on the U.S. Housing Bust

Alec Klein and Zach Goldfarb at the Washington Post present a three part series on the housing boom and bust starting today. The first part, The Bubble, discusses the causes of the housing market crisis. The next two parts will be released Monday and Tuesday.

The full series, with some interactive timeline and other resources is available here.

Note: Tanta receives a nice mention in the resource section.

The young woman who walked into Pinnacle's Vienna office in 2004 said her boyfriend wanted to buy a house near Annapolis. He hoped to get a special kind of loan for which he didn't have to report his income, assets or employment. Mortgage broker [Kevin] Connelly handed the woman a pile of paperwork.

On the day of the settlement, she arrived alone. Her boyfriend was on a business trip, she said, but she had his power of attorney. Informed that for this kind of loan he would have to sign in person, she broke into tears: Her boyfriend actually had been serving a jail term.

Not a problem. Almost anyone could borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars for a house in those wild days. Connelly agreed to send the paperwork to the courthouse where the boyfriend had a hearing. As it happened, he was freed that day. Still, Connelly said, "that was one of mine that goes down in the annals of the strange."

The problem was the strange was commonplace during the boom.