"We had an aggressive home-mortgage industry trying to get people into homes they couldn't afford at a time when home prices were very high. It turned out to be a house of cards," says Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College. "We're in the early stages of the cleanup."

The Journal's analysis indicates that some major subprime lenders, such as Washington Mutual Inc.'s Long Beach Mortgage unit, began scaling back or tightening their standards a year or more ago. But commercial banks and thrifts filled the void, helping to sustain real-estate markets that might otherwise have begun cooling.

The data suggest that financial suffering is likely to persist in many parts of the U.S. where subprime lending had surged. Many loans at risk of going bad have not yet done so. As much as $600 billion of adjustable-rate subprime loans, for example, are due to adjust to higher rates by the end of 2008, which means that more and more borrowers are likely to fall behind.

Last September, Darla Ball, a printer and copier saleswoman, purchased a $460,000 home in Las Vegas using an adjustable-rate subprime loan with an initial rate of 8.2%. At the time, she says, she expected to refinance before her interest rate resets to 14% next year, which will raise her monthly payments to $8,000 from $3,700. But in the past year, she says, prices of comparable homes in her subdivision have fallen to $310,000, which means she would not qualify for a new $460,000 mortgage, unless home values go back up to that level, an unlikely scenario. She says she has stopped paying her mortgage and is trying to negotiate with her lender. "I'm going to lose my home anyway," she says, "so why pay?"

Fort Myers, Fla., is known for its boulevard lined with palm trees, bankrolled years ago by its most famous snowbird, inventor Thomas Edison. These days, the city is fast earning a reputation as an example of the deepening U.S. mortgage crisis. The area's median sales price for existing homes is down 22% since December 2005. Foreclosures are running at an all-time high. And there is no end in sight.

Between 2004 and 2006, more than $8.5 billion in high-rate mortgages were made in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metropolitan area. The loans encouraged borrowers to stretch more than ever, which helped inflate real-estate values. Two of every five home loans made in the area last year carried high rates, more than twice the 2004 rate.