Stockton Has Housing Issues
Because, with house prices tumbling, more people in Stockton face the repossession of their homes than anywhere else in the US.
But Stockton is also a place where you can really get a feel for the staggering amounts of money banks loaned during the boom - with few or no questions asked.
Lending frenzy
In his 25 years as an estate agent in Stockton, Kevin Moran had never seen anything like it as seemingly limitless bank loans sent house prices rocketing.
“It was crazy”, he says. “People felt that if they didn’t make a high enough offer on a house, it would be gone.
“Instead of saying ‘What do you want to do on a Saturday? Let’s go to the park’, they’d say ‘Let’s go buy a house’”.
At the height of the buying frenzy, in 2006, Will Trawick was selling new homes for a Stockton developer.
Faced with crowds of a hundred buyers, bank loans in hand, all chasing the 20 houses he might have on offer, he organised bingo-style lotteries.
“We had ping-pong balls with numbers, just like you’d see on a TV show”, Mr Trawick recalls.
“Everybody would have a number. We’d put the ping-pong balls in, spin it and, you know ‘Number 22! Yoo-hoo!’ They’d jump up and yell, come on up and pick which home they wanted, and leave a deposit cheque”.
It was not only home-buyers who banks were keen to lend to.
With house prices soaring, pretty well anyone who owned a home in Stockton suddenly found they had plenty of equity in their property - equity the banks were eager to convert into cash.
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