We're in the opposite case. We bought on the high side, on the way down the 1st Bush admin (Geo H) and have been here 15+ years. We re-fi'd the loan about 6-8 years ago to get a smaller payment and lower interest on the remaining balance.
We still owe $, but the properties around here went way up.
Originally we bought a house in a near-empty neighborhood next to a defunct ski resort. The resort has been resurrected, so the property values went way up. Assuming that our place is worth even 1/2 of what the last reasonable estimate I knew was, we owe less. The ski resort may go out of business again this year realistically.
But we didn't buy this place based on the resort, we bought a log house on an acre of land that was bank-owned, in a near-empty neighborhood.
In a lot of ways, we got lucky. In other ways, we couldn't afford to leave. DH got laid off within 6 months of our signing the mortgage here and got a job in OH. We couldn't afford to move, and the housing market here had nosedived in the 6 months after we bought it. He gave up the job in OH and went to work for someone else with no raise and no regular checks for four long, hellish years. At the end of that, we had very few assets left. I opened my bookshop with the last cash I had,and we punted.
The economy did better, and DH went to work for someone who actually did pay regularly. They laid him off 2 years later. Then he had nearly the same thing happen in 4 years. Everytime we started to get ahead, boom! something happened and we were stuck again.
So here we are. At the moment he's working and we can afford what we've got, except in all the financial ups and downs we ran up a lot of cc debt, and we're whittling away at that.
My house is worth more than I owe on it, and I can afford it (at the moment). Thank God!
Judi
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