How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and how the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.

Our Lot tells how an entire nation got swept up in real estate mania, and it casts the business story--the collapse of the mortgage markets and its global impact on the economy--as the product of a decades-long project of social engineering by the U .S. government to make homeownership possible for those who had never been able to attain it before. Based on original reporting, Our Lot looks at the boom as experienced by ordinary Americans, and examines how our own economic anxieties and realities, combined with greed and delusion on Wall S treet and in Washington, inflated the real estate bubble. In accessible language, the book helps homeowners and would-be homeowners understand what really happened, how it has affected our homes and communities, and how we can move on to a future we'll want to live in. Alyssa Katz teaches journalism at New York University and works as an editorial consultant with the Pratt Center for Community Development. Formerly the editor of City Limits, a magazine about New York City and its neighborhoods, she currently writes for Mother Jones, New York, The Big Money, and other publications. In Our Lot, Alyssa Katz goes back to the origins of the mortgage crisis that has wrecked the economy, revealing the real estate bubble as the product of a decades-long project of social and financial engineering by the U.S. government to make the American Dream of homeownership possible for those who had never been able to attain it before. Community activists and Wall Street bankers both played a pivotal role, pushing two fatally incompatible agendas for creating a nation of homeowners. Once those became reality under Reagan and Clinton, and Fannie Mae and the investment banks turned into unstoppable machines, it became clear that the great homeownership crusade was programmed to self-destruct--but by then homeowners and securities investors alike were making too much money to notice. Based on original reporting, Our Lot looks at the boom as experienced by ordinary Americans, and examines how our own economic anxieties and realities, combined with greed and delusion on Wall Street and in Washington, inflated the real estate bubble. With detailed analysis, the book helps homeowners and would-be homeowners understand what really happened, how it has affected our homes and communities, and how we can move on to a future we'll want to live in. Brilliantly researched and tightly argued, Our Lot reveals the untold story of the housing crisis through the eyes of the victims and villains that created it.--Christopher Hayes, Washington, D.C. editor for The Nation

Our Lot is a sobering account of the origins of our current mortgage crisis. Katz methodically, and with great precision, traces the roots of homeownership in American society. Leaving few stones unturned, Our Lot provides an incisive analysis of the rational and speculative decisions that have made America so susceptible to the twists and turns of the housing industry. The book is a timely historical account, but its lessons are clear and penetrating for the contemporary era.--Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day

Our Lot is a page-turning tale of how a real estate boom was conjured on a foundation of false hopes and Wall Street alchemy. Alyssa Katz digs deeply into the devastation that reckless lending and cynical speculation visited upon American places like Cleveland, Ohio, and Lee County, Florida. Her book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the roots of our nation's housing crisis.--Michael Hudson, coauthor of Merchants of Misery

With the real estate crisis blighting thousands of neighborhoods and millions of lives, Alyssa Katz's lucid, coolly outraged new book is an absolutely essential guide to how it all happened. Katz had the prescience to see what was coming, and her deeply researched, historically grounded book can help us all avoid similar catastrophes in the future.--Michelle Goldberg, author of The Means of Reproduction

Richly detailed analysis of the recent (and ignominious) history of the American real estate market... Katz, a journalism professor at New York University, draws on an impressive number of interviews and thorough secondary research to illuminate the disastrous consequences of pushing underqualified buyers into ownership . . . Katz writes with authority and empathy. The many people the author interviews, from the single mother in Cleveland who lost her house just two years after buying it to the family living near Sacramento whose new home is aready falling apart, become the heroes, victims and sometimes culprits in this gripping account of collective irresponsibility.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"This richly detailed analysis of the recent (and ignominious) history of the American real estate market opens on a note of false optimism: in 1991, after 20 years of toil, urban housing activist Gale Cincotta successfully argued that Congress should require that 40% of the home loans issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go to low-income buyers. The Clinton administration extended this campaign for higher ownership rates among low-income populations throughout the 1990s. Katz, a journalism professor at New York University, draws on an impressive number of interviews and thorough secondary research to illuminate the disastrous consequences of pushing underqualified buyers into ownership. Many of the topics she addresses will be familiar to readers by now — predatory subprime loans, get-rich-quick house flipping schemes, scandalous mortgage frauds — but Katz writes with authority and empathy. The many people the author interviews, from the single mother in Cleveland who lost her house just two years after buying it to the family living near Sacramento whose new home is already falling apart, become the heroes, victims and sometimes culprits in this gripping account of collective irresponsibility. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and how the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.

Our Lot tells how an entire nation got swept up in real estate mania, and it casts the business story--the collapse of the mortgage markets and its global impact on the economy--as the product of a decades-long project of social engineering by the U .S. government to make homeownership possible for those who had never been able to attain it before. Based on original reporting, Our Lot looks at the boom as experienced by ordinary Americans, and examines how our own economic anxieties and realities, combined with greed and delusion on Wall S treet and in Washington, inflated the real estate bubble. In accessible language, the book helps homeowners and would-be homeowners understand what really happened, how it has affected our homes and communities, and how we can move on to a future we'll want to live in.