UnionTrib: 20% of recent home buyers spend half of pay on mortgages

More Californians are stretching their finances to afford the state's ever-more-expensive homes, with 20 percent of recent home buyers plowing more than half their monthly income into their mortgages.

These "house-poor" Californians have been a significant contributor to the state's housing boom, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a Bay Area nonprofit think tank. ...

In addition to taking on more debt, some recent buyers have tapped creative mortgages such as interest-only loans to get into a house. In San Diego, 62 percent of home buyers opted for interest-only loans in 2004, according to First American/Loan Performance, a San Francisco mortgage research firm.

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