As a result, commercial banks readily granted credit for house purchases to households that otherwise could not have afforded it, and without adequately assessing their creditworthiness or credit default risk. At the same time, in an attempt to achieve higher yields, a number of innovative and increasingly complex financial products were offered, particularly in the United States.
One prominent example of this was the bundling of mortgages in new and highly complex financial products and their resale as new securities to third parties via global financial markets. It eventually became evident that this practice was viable only as long as house prices in the United States continued to increase.