"Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us"

New from Bloomsbury USA: Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us by Alyssa Katz.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and how the US 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 subprime empire and the global impact it had on the economy--as part of a project of social engineering beginning in the 1930s by the U.S. government to make homeownership available to those who had never been able to attain it before. Based on original reporting, Our Lot does not dwell on the foibles of executives. It looks at the boom as experienced by ordinary Americans, and examines how our own economic anxieties and realities helped fuel the real estate bubble. Conveyed in accessible language and through narrative reporting, the book looks to help homeowners and would-be homeowners understand what really happened, how it has affected our homes and communities, and how we can move on into a future we'll want to live in.

Visit Alyssa Katz's website.