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Lisa, whose preapproved financing collapsed.
    The retired couple liked Lisa. Or maybe they liked the idea of adding some youth to the building. So they financed the property themselves. In December 1998 Lisa put down $25,000 cash and signed a private, fifteen-year fixed mortgage with her neighbors for $56,000. Every month she would walk down three flights of stairs and slide her payment under the door. She never dealt with a mortgage company and never had to take out a separate homeowner’s insurance policy, as her neighbors bundled it with the monthly payment. Lisa’s local “banker” lived in her building, and they agreed to a mutually beneficial private deal. No hidden fees, no adjustable-rate mortgages, none of the innovations of the past forty years of financial services. There were maybe a dozen mortgages like this left in America.
    Lisa had backed into a nice little life: a job she enjoyed, the respect and appreciation of her patients, the view of the water. And then she met Alan in an America Online chat room. Both Alan and Lisa were middle-class Jews raised in the Northeast, reinventing themselves amid the sunshine. Lisa introduced Alan to her brother, who ran a business reselling mobile phones and equipment, and Alan began to work with him. A closeness soon blossomed between Lisa and Alan, and they quickly fell in love.
    Very early into the relationship, while not explicitly trying to have a child, Lisa and Alan stopped trying to prevent it. The tug of motherhood pulled Lisa into her life’s next phase. In the fall of 2002 she became pregnant. The couple made plans to marry and beamed with joy. But twelve weeks into the pregnancy, Lisa was at work when she found a pink spot on her clothing. Hours later, at the hospital, the obstetrician couldn’t locate the baby’s heartbeat. It took surgery to extract the fetus; Lisa’s body wouldn’t let go.
    Despite their profound grief, Lisa and Alan did marry. And it took three years—a period of much heartache, guarded hopefulness, and expensive fertility treatments—before they conceived a second time. After enduring so much, Lisa was thrilled to have life growing inside her again. She wasforty-one and knew this would be her final pregnancy. She smiled every time the baby kicked and when she got to see her little arms and legs on the sonogram.
    And then Alan tried to sell Lisa on moving.
    Lisa and Alan lived in Lisa’s one-bedroom co-op. The place could barely fit two people; Alan considered three out of the question. He started telling Lisa he wanted their daughter to grow up in a typical American home, with her own room. Lisa felt like the motivation wasn’t simply greater comfort but a sense of duty, what you could call “white picket fence syndrome.” People get married and have a child and move into a big house. Society dictated that, and everyone had to play by the rules.
    â€œFor people all over this world, this would be paradise,” Lisa argued, pointing out how families lived in New York with two kids and a dog in a studio apartment. Maybe in a couple of years, after the baby started walking, after they built up more equity, it would make sense to move, but not now. Lisa had her view of the water, and she didn’t want to give it up. But Alan was insistent.
    It was early 2007 when Lisa and Alan started looking for a new place. Whatever Lisa remembered about the housing market when she bought her apartment did not correspond. Stories about real estate mania were legendary in Florida. Turn on the radio or television, pass by a bus stop, and the messages bombarded you: New homes! Great opportunity! Buy now! One day Lisa drove by a row of people in tents, lined up in front of a trailer on an empty tract of land. These were prospective buyers, camped out for two or three days to pick their preferred spot on a grid of new construction. In Florida during the housing bubble, every day was Black Friday.
    As