Homes Way Over Valued

[Slick61]

Yep... I did a cross-country relocation in the spring of '04. My house in Florida sold in a matter of weeks. Which was good, considering I had to now deal with Southern California prices. I knew what to expect, but was still freaked about housing costs. At the time, the market was so hot you basically had to walk into a place & say... "Okay". I set a price range & stuck to it... I hate my house, & it's no where NEAR as nice as my Florida house was, but I can afford the mortgage.

I bought-in before the peak, & at one point, my home's value was up almost $200k. Am now back to square one... actually, according to Zillow, I'm $10k in the hole. I have 2 more years til my mortgage starts to adjust. Not sure what I'm going to do. Would like to move to a house I like better, there's 2 houses down the street that've been on the market for over 9 months. May have to stay put til values recover somewhat (if ever). My ARM has a max increase of 2% per year for 2 years. I made sure that I would be able to handle it no matter what happened. My only regret is that I could've gotten a much nicer, much newer house for about $10k-$15k more. Oh well... live & learn.

What really irritates me is all these articles telling people that if they can't make their mortgage payments... just walk away. What about the rest of us who live within out means & pay our bills on time... (even after rate adjustments) Why do we have to pay for the stupidity of others? A lot of people place blame on the lenders... which, to a point, is true... but no one put a gun to the buyer's heads to sign those mortgage papers. Continued appreciation & low interest rates were NOT guaranteed. There's such a thing as PERSONAL RESPONSIBIILITY! A dying concept, granted. These days, it's more convenient to say "it wasn't MY fault". ugh... don't get me started.

ok... off my soapbox for now.