Neighborhood Swayed by 'Liar's Loans'

[Joanne98]

Source: AP

BOSTON -- Upstairs at Victory Chapel Church -- a cinderblock bunker converted from a long-ago Ford dealership -- the pews are reserved for praising heaven. But downstairs, in a basement rental hall, a pair of women preached of worldly wonders.

At 11 a.m. on alternating Saturdays, they set out rows of folding chairs and spread tables with urns of coffee and boxes of Dunkin' Donuts. And they offered testimony to the bounty of real estate, encouraging their growing flock to buy the wood-frame walk-ups and rowhouses surrounding this workaday stretch of Columbia Road, just down from the OJ Car Wash.

The key was trust, they told the faithful, as the voices of the practicing choir rang through the building.

"I really was thinking it would be at least a year before I'd get a mortgage," says Hayes, an executive secretary and mother of two. She was wary of borrowing because she was saddled with her own student loans.

But "on Saturday I went to the seminar," she says. By Sunday, she was preapproved to buy.



Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-stretching-the-truth,0,3391188.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[David__77]

1. All a part of the bubble's inflation.

Such a terrible market distortion. The "correction" will certainly lead to a continued decline in prices.