OAKLAND — Rachael Herron's new condo will ensure her financial salvation -- unless it provokes her ruin.
Herron put no money down for her tidy one-bedroom, borrowing the entire purchase price of $211,000. To keep her monthly payments as low as possible, she got an adjustable-rate mortgage that won't require her to pay any principal for three years.
Thanks to her "interest-only" loan, the 911 police dispatcher was able to afford, barely, her first home. She now has a stake in California's sizzling real estate market. As her home increases in value, she plans to use some of that equity to pay down her credit cards.
But Herron is also setting herself up for a day of reckoning: Nov. 1, 2007.
That's when she has to start paying off her loan principal. If interest rates are higher than when she bought her home last fall -- something many economists consider probable if not inevitable -- her monthly payment will increase by as much as a third.
"I don't know what I'll do," said Herron, 32. "I'm already working overtime to pay my bills."
Confronted with soaring home prices, Californians are adopting a "buy now, pay later" strategy on a massive scale. The boom in interest-only loans -- nearly half the state's home buyers used them last year, up from virtually none in 2001-- is the engine behind California's surging home prices.
But all that borrowed money might be living on borrowed time. When higher bills start coming due, Herron and hundreds of thousands of other homeowners in the state will have to find ways to cope -- or will have to sell.
In the most dire scenario, if they owe more on the home than it's worth, they'll simply walk away. Abundant foreclosures could spark a downturn in the entire housing market, leading to the long-feared bursting of what some call a housing bubble.
Interest-only loans, and other forms of so-called creative financing that are far riskier than the traditional 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, have allowed more people to afford homes in California even as prices have skyrocketed.
When the price of houses in California soared 17% in 2003 and 22% in 2004, a curious thing happened: Instead of home ownership decreasing because fewer people could afford houses, it rose to record levels.
During the last two years, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, home ownership in the state rose to 59.7% from 57.7%. The previous record was 58.4%, measured during the 1960 Census.
