"lost" $30,000 today

[pixiewings71]

Wish my house was nice enough to lose $100k+. It's not even worth $100k.

Most people buy a house and live in it. Why not try that? I'm pretty sure the value of my house will be fine 50 years from now when the kids sell it....

We bought this house planning to live in it until the girls were out of high school. But since I lost my job that may not be possible.....we are discussing a move to another state to be near my family, that wasn't in our plan 7 years ago.....and yes, our house is down in value from when we bought it 7 years ago, even with all the upgrades we did when we re-built it.

 

[scrapquitler]

We just had a new assessment done last month by the town. Our assessment (in CT they figure 80 or 85%, I can't remember which, of the fair market value as the assessed value for tax purposes), has increased every time they've done it (every 5 years). When we bought our house 12 years ago, the assessment was something like $120K, now it is $190K.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

I guess we're lucky to live in an area (SF Bay Area) where housing has pretty much retained its value in the last few years. Of course, we pay through the nose to get a house here but things haven't dropped too much. Our house has doubled in value since we bought it in 1997 and it's been holding steady. We just closed on a re-fi that dropped us by almost 2 percentage points. I'm so looking foward to that lower payment!

 

[dfchelbay]

This subject is a constant source of pain, disgust, anger, frustration, helplessness, etc. for us. Our home has lost approximately $173,000.00 in value. What pains us even more is that we paid extra every month toward the principal for the past eight years. The entire things just sickens me. We paid more ahead of time so that we could walk away with ease, selling at whatever price was enough for us to just go when we wanted to relocate to Florida permanently. I'm really sad about this subject.

 

[Jaklackus]

After 4.5 years we are down 60k on Zillow....with a comparable house listed in the neighborhood at 60k...which would knock us down another 50k....I'm not even factoring in the 45k in 'equity' that zillow showed that we gained in the months after buying the house. I didn't think that we overspent...we stayed below 175k in central FL at the top of the housing bubble....the feeling was that we would be better insulated when the housing bubble burst because we were so conservative with our purchase compared to everyone else..I knew we would lose some value..but never in a million years did I think we could lose this much.

The only bright spot is that the entire mortgage amount represents a fraction of DH's annual income...I'm just dragging my feet about going into payoff mode .. stupidly hoping that the politicians do something crazy like lop 50k off of everyone's mortgage across the board or force mortgage companies to let people walk without ill effects....so I can go buy the 60k house around the corner with cash and be done with it.then I can start blowing mortgage payments on GM cars and carbon credits....

 

[krcit]

Wow. Couple of kind of rude posts. I would think most people buy a home and hope for the value to go up Just because people are upset that their homes have lost value doesn't mean that they were planning on flipping it. I was lucky in that I bought my house 13 years ago right before real estate over here went nuts. If I sold right now I would probably come out 250K ahead but if I had sold about 3 years ago I would have gotten another 100K. My neighbors bought at the top of the market and would probably take a loss of around 75k if they had to sell right now. I don't think it's a bad thing to be a bit worried that your home value has dropped so dramatically even if you have no plans to sell right now.

 

[bigmama67]

We bought last August and Zillow has us down $44K from what we paid. We're not planning to move though. We put down 10% and got an FHA loan which we were happy to get with less-than-stellar credit. So it will come back in time, and when we get up to 20% into the home and don't need to have the PMI, we will look into refinancing. I pay a tiny bit extra towards the principal every month.

 

[robinb]

We got our house assessment today. Our house and land went down about $30,000 this year (Although I'm sure our property taxes will not go down )
We live in Wisconsin.

Just wondering how bad it is for everyone else???

I live in Wisconsin and my property taxes are tied to my assessment.

 

[dallastxcpa]

So sorry to hear about all those who are upside down. We are in Texas and our real estate has stayed pretty stable even with the foreclosures going at next to nothing.

I hope our economy recovers soon and people are able to get back up on their feet. It is a terrible place to be in.

 

[kelleyrn2000]

We refinanced last year and when we had our home appraised it had lost 25,000. We have a modest 3 bedroom ranch, zoned ag, on 2 acres. Unfortunately, both last year and the year prior, our taxes have gone up quite a bit. 1700.00 increase in two years, so now we are paying 5,000.00 in taxes per year. This year we are planning to fight our assessment unless we see a decrease. Luckily for us, the house should be paid off in about 10 years if everything goes as planned.

 

[mhsjax]

Wish my house was nice enough to lose $100k+. It's not even worth $100k.

Most people buy a house and live in it. Why not try that? I'm pretty sure the value of my house will be fine 50 years from now when the kids sell it....

wow, you know, not everyone buys a house just to flip. People do have to sell sometimes, the lose jobs, they get another job with better pay or opportunity in another state or they get transfered.

I don't know why people are so hostile when people complain that their houses have depreciated.

People on here seem so judgemental.

 

[kirstenb1]

We bought this house planning to live in it until the girls were out of high school. But since I lost my job that may not be possible.....we are discussing a move to another state to be near my family, that wasn't in our plan 7 years ago.....and yes, our house is down in value from when we bought it 7 years ago, even with all the upgrades we did when we re-built it.

I'm so sorry. This could be any of us. You never know what's around the corner.

 

[crisi]

We are house shopping for a family member (he has cancer, no disability insurance, no assets - so we are buying a house for him to live in through treatment and afterwards while he reestablishes himself - this will drive him into bankruptcy). This weekend we saw a house - young couple, tiny house, she is pregnant with their first, they are $50k underwater and trying to do a short sale.

(Cute house, but we don't have time to deal with a short sale).

As for ours, we bought it long enough ago that we haven't lost value - and the mortgage is paid off - or was until we decided to take money out to become non-profit landlords.

 

[vicki_c]

Wonder how many owners just assumed they were going to gain equity....

you do realize that buying a house is not some promise that you will be able to flip it, right??

What in the world brought that comment on? I live in my houses, not flip them. My house is a place to live to me, not an investment. But that still doesn't mean I have to like being out all of the equity I brought to it after 10 years of home ownership. Why so hostile?

 

[silmarg]

I live in Wisconsin and my property taxes are tied to my assessment.

Property Taxes are generally based of assessment, but if your house was assessed at 1% of the value of all homes in your town, then you pay 1% of the overall tax being collected. So the only way for your tax bill to go down is not simply that your assessment goes down, it that your assessment goes down more than the average assessment went down (or in an up market that your assessment goes up less than the others in your town goes up). The other way your property tax would go down is if the taxing authority was going to cut their budget and collect less overall (fat chance).

When I bought my house in 1998 I felt bad for the owners we bought from. They were in the house for 10 years. And they walked away from the closing with $2000... That is rough.

We are totally fortunate as the house has since more than doubled (even after the recent downturn). That said, what I pay in property taxes on an 1800 sq ft home is just nuts - well over $1000 per month - and this is not a typo.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

We just had a new assessment done last month by the town. Our assessment (in CT they figure 80 or 85%, I can't remember which, of the fair market value as the assessed value for tax purposes), has increased every time they've done it (every 5 years). When we bought our house 12 years ago, the assessment was something like $120K, now it is $190K.

I was told it was 70% by our tax collector. Not sure if it's 100% true or not.

We haven't really lost anything but we haven't gained either. Our problem is nothing moves in this town, houses never go up for sale they get inherited. We are waiting it out until my brother comes home from Japan and Korea, he'd like to buy it (we are next door to my parents). We will sell it to him to cover the pay off, so we will lose money.

So sorry to hear about all those who are upside down. We are in Texas and our real estate has stayed pretty stable even with the foreclosures going at next to nothing.

I hope our economy recovers soon and people are able to get back up on their feet. It is a terrible place to be in.

Our friends moved from FL to Texas last year, they found a great house for a decent price. They've tried to sell the house in FL for almost 3 years to no avail. They are walking away from it now, over 60% of the neighborhood is in foreclosure and they found out 2 weeks ago alligators are living in the pools in the houses across the street.

 

[Momto4boys]

It's very scary when you have that worry that something could happen that would force you to have to sell a home that isn't going to give you any of the money you put into it back so you can buy something else! Our last house we lived in for 3 years and then had to move because of work and we were lucky to come out with just enough for a downpayment on another home. We have been in this house for 3 years and are now waiting to hear if we have to move again! Thankfully we'll come out a bit better this time but it's still up in the air and very scary!

 

[semisweetcocoa]

ouch..sorry, so true taxes never go down.

 

[cats mom]

We used to own a house in a bubble area, and while we didn't sell at the top, a job relocation forced us to sell before things tanked too badly. We were not thrilled with the price we got back then - we are now.

One of our neighbors was not so lucky. He was a builder who was trying to sell his fancy custom home (much bigger & nicer than ours btw). He was asking 1.3 million in 2007, and I know he turned down at least one $900,000+ offer because he felt it was too low. He finally ended up selling short for $475,000 in 2009
Crazy, huh?

My hubby's co-workers are shocked by our frugality in housing. They have houses that double our square footage and subsequently their mortgage.

In this down ecomony I take our modest 2,100 sq ft, 3 bed/2 bath house with its mortgage payment that is only 14% of hubby's gross salary with pride.

Guess it just depends on where you live. We walked through an open house in a nearby neighborhood last weekend. It was a 2,200 sq ft 3 bed/2 bath house, so probably similar to your modest house, but it had an asking price of $639,900

Our friends moved from FL to Texas last year, they found a great house for a decent price. They've tried to sell the house in FL for almost 3 years to no avail. They are walking away from it now, over 60% of the neighborhood is in foreclosure and they found out 2 weeks ago alligators are living in the pools in the houses across the street.

Yikes! The alligator thing really freaks me out.

 

[kelly1218]

Property Taxes are generally based of assessment, but if your house was assessed at 1% of the value of all homes in your town, then you pay 1% of the overall tax being collected. So the only way for your tax bill to go down is not simply that your assessment goes down, it that your assessment goes down more than the average assessment went down (or in an up market that your assessment goes up less than the others in your town goes up). The other way your property tax would go down is if the taxing authority was going to cut their budget and collect less overall (fat chance).

When I bought my house in 1998 I felt bad for the owners we bought from. They were in the house for 10 years. And they walked away from the closing with $2000... That is rough.

We are totally fortunate as the house has since more than doubled (even after the recent downturn). That said, what I pay in property taxes on an 1800 sq ft home is just nuts - well over $1000 per month - and this is not a typo.

wow.... I was just cringing over our tax bill. They redid our assessment, and added the addition we put on. Our bill came in $2020 more than last year.... putting us at about $7800 a year... only about $600 a month for us.