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More Americans are stretching to buy homes, the latest sign that rising prices are making homeownership more difficult for a broad swath of potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly one in five conventional mortgage loans made this winter went to borrowers spending more than 45 percent of their monthly incomes on their mortgage payment and other debts, the highest proportion since the housing crisis, according to new data from mortgage-data tracker CoreLogic Inc. That was almost triple the proportion of such loans made in 2016 and the first half of 2017, CoreLogic said. Economists said rising debt levels are a symptom of a market in which home prices are rising sharply in relation to incomes, driven in part by a historic lack of supply that is forcing prices higher.

Refinancings make up a smaller portion of the mortgage business than at any time in the past two decades, posing a challenge for lenders who already fear higher interest rates and climbing house prices could eventually depress purchase activity, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last year, 37 percent of mortgage-origination volume was because of refinancings, according to industry research group Inside Mortgage Finance. That is the smallest proportion since 1995, and the number of refinancings is widely expected to shrink again this year. In 2012, refinancings were 72 percent of originations. While purchase activity has climbed steadily from a post-financial-crisis nadir in 2011, growth in 2017 wasn’t enough to offset a $366 billion decline in refinancing activity. The result: The overall mortgage market fell around 12 percent, to $1.8 trillion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.