Many rural residents jumped to get subprime loans at initial affordable terms during the mid-2000s, only to have fortunes disappear as housing boom turned to bust. Signs of the aftermath:
— Empty homes. Between 2007 and 2009, vacancy rates more than doubled in rural counties in which at least 40 percent of housing loans were subprime; in 2009, the average housing vacancy was 25 percent. That increase was higher than for both metropolitan areas and rural counties as whole.
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