Details about this story

• Source: Sacramento Bee
• Date: November 18, 2007
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Dale Kasler , Phillip Reese , Jim Wasserman
• Topics: Real Estate , Mortgages
• Data Types: Federal Data
• Description/Excerpt: If you bought a house in the Sacramento area last year, chances are your annual income came to about $80,000. But your loan application said you earned a good deal more. A Bee computer analysis of more than 61,000 Sacramento-area mortgages over two years reveals striking discrepancies – gaps as high as 25 percent – between what homebuyers earned and what was listed on their loan applications. Behind the discrepancies was a cascade of "stated income" loans that didn't require proof of borrowers' incomes or assets. Although statistics aren't available on the volume of stated income loans, experts say these mortgages pumped a considerable amount of air into the area's housing bubble – and helped bring about its collapse. By putting people into homes they couldn't afford, stated income loans contributed mightily to a culture of loose lending and a wave of foreclosures that's washing over the Sacramento region.
• Database or Graphic: Go to site (com/static/newsroom/swf/november07/mortgageflash/)