It might sound a little sarcastic, but i think in the vast majority of cases, if you have a deposit < 20% the right answer is to rent.
Median home price in Bay Area is what, $900K or so? 20% of that is $180K in cash. I don't know many people who have this, yet there are plenty of home owners here, and I wouldn't be willing to say that the majority of them made a bad decision.
Having said that, the cause for my initial comment was just expressing my worry that if everyone was only able to put down a small amount of the total purchase price, then we're likely financing a lot of people who probably cant afford the place they're living in as soon as something small goes wrong.
Do we know how people defaulting correlates with their initial down payment size? I'm sure someone has studied this, but I have not been able to find any stats.
http://www.thetruthaboutmortgage.com/median-down-payments-ha...