Subprime Lending Not to Blame For Credit Mess,

It’s almost taken as common knowledge at this point that out-of-control subprime mortgage lending — the funding of home loans to borrowers with less-than-perfect credit — was the chief culprit behind the unsustainable boom in U.S. home prices that eventually derailed the real estate and mortgage markets.

But new research, published Wednesday by UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business Center for Real Estate, suggests that subprime loan products themselves may not have been the primary cause of U.S. home prices’ rise and fall.