By ANYA MARTIN
 Getting a home loan is hard enough, but first-time buyers who want a jumbo mortgage have even higher hurdles to clear.
In the San Francisco Bay area, where real-estate prices are sky high, it’s not uncommon for first-time buyers to need jumbo loans, which start there at $625,501 (above $417,000 in lower-cost areas of the country). The region is also a hub for high-tech employers that pay competitive salaries, says Mathew Carson, a mortgage broker at San Francisco-based First Capital Group. “Given the industries we have here—the Googles and Twitters and the like—many people have fairly significant incomes. And the values of properties here have skyrocketed in the past 12 months,” he adds…
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