This is the first major decline in the housing market since the Great Depression. Mortgage defaults are surging to unprecedented levels, and experts claim that we’ve only scratched the surface of the subprime crisis. To make matters worse, home prices are declining, creating a negative equity position for homeowners who are not facing foreclosure. The housing market is not set to bottom out until summer of 2008, and the losses won’t peak until 2009. Unsophisticated borrowers coupled with mortgage fraud and lending abuse made for a colossal disaster.