"lost" $30,000 today

[mhsjax]

Oh, I will avoid you like the plague. I can disagree with lots of people, but you take the cake. All you have done is put words in my mouth. I don't appreciate it one bit.

Please, gimme a break I was most definitely not rude. YOU were the one who said you lost every thing and that you felt trapped. I was simply saying that assuming you are still making mortgage payments and plan on being in your house for some time, the market will bounce back and you will have equity in it. This was in response to your post of losing your life savings.

I didn't say one thing about you being upside down, inside out or any thing else. Nor did I say you couldn't make your payments. I did not claim any thing about your intelligence or any thing else.



and my answer was totally on the topic of gains and loss. It's a down market every where. the majority of housing lost money and if the pattern follows the normal up and down motions the majority of those houses will go up in value.

Unfortunately they are saying it could take a very very long time. Guess we have to just wait it out.

 

[Planogirl]

I think that some people here are making assumptions and also not expressing themselves all that well. Risk or not, it's still a bummer to lose a lot of home equity or even worse to be upside down. You can have a great career and be established in a wonderful company (or so you think) and it can all fall apart. If everyone decides to play it safe and not buy because you COULD lose your job then that wouldn't be great for the housing industry either.

 

[disneyfans95]

I think that some people here are making assumptions and also not expressing themselves all that well. Risk or not, it's still a bummer to lose a lot of home equity or even worse to be upside down. You can have a great career and be established in a wonderful company (or so you think) and it can all fall apart. If everyone decides to play it safe and not buy because you COULD lose your job then that wouldn't be great for the housing industry either.

I do agree with some of those points. All generations faced the same situation though. Our parents, grandparents etc all had to deal with the risk of losing their jobs and in turn their houses.

Many people did buy over their heads though. Not saying they were flipping the house, but they saw an approval number from their bank, and bought up to that when they got their house. They left not wiggle room, little equity at closing, etc.. When times got tough, there was little or no choices.

And in the end, we are talking about money, people's homes and it is very sensitive and personal. Some folks have a hard time talking about topics like this and not taking the discussion points as an insult to them.

 

[Tri-Delta4Life]

Do you have jobs? LOL

Yep! Iowa actually has some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country I'm not a native Iowan... I moved here for a job! DH is from LA and he moved here for a job too!

 

[Tina]

I do agree with some of those points. All generations faced the same situation though. Our parents, grandparents etc all had to deal with the risk of losing their jobs and in turn their houses.

Many people did buy over their heads though. Not saying they were flipping the house, but they saw an approval number from their bank, and bought up to that when they got their house. They left not wiggle room, little equity at closing, etc.. When times got tough, there was little or no choices.

And in the end, we are talking about money, people's homes and it is very sensitive and personal. Some folks have a hard time talking about topics like this and not taking the discussion points as an insult to them.

True. And those are the people who are in foreclosure, for the most part. But there is still a huge population that did not do that, like myself. I did not overbuy for my income level, I put enough down to have a great deal of equity, yet the market has declined so drastically that my equity shrunk to nothing and then some. Like I said, I like my home. I don't have any immediate plans to move, but I am really locked into this property. I've already had to decline a great job offer (although I still have a great job now). If I were to remarry, I would still be stuck with this home or having to shell out cash to get out of it. It just stinks.

 

[crisi]

OP here - I wasn't talking about flipping a house....I was just wondering how many of us were in the same predicament. Sometimes it helps to know you're not alone.

We built our house in 1996. They value has increased as I would have expected it to in 14 years..then in the last year the assessed value dropped $30,000

We built ours in 1998 for $197k. At one point during the height of the craziness, we could have sold it for $380k. Its now work about $260 - $280k. That's still about a 3% annualized return, not bad considering the current state of the housing market.

So instead of "losing" $100k that I never had, I figure I've made about $80k.

 

[A Mickeyfan]

$30K in the last year.. wished mine only dropped that much. My drop was more like $150K..

 

[Pigeon]

Our assessment has no real relationship to the market value, so it's not something I worry about. The mill rate goes up and comes down, so at the end of the day, it's the property taxes that matter to me.

We have excellent schools and good services, and paying them doesn't bother me at all.

 

[Juliet25]

We've "lost" about $20,000. TBH, I'm not that upset. We're in a 2/2 starter home and in retrospect we would have been way better off renting. If we lost $20k when we go to sell, it means we gain much more when we go to buy (and we sure need to buy -- three kids in a 2 bedroom is tight quarters).

We bought in 2005 naively thinking we needed to do so before being priced out of the market forever. The homes in our area that I really wanted to move into were going for $400-500k. Now, they're going for $300-400k. We need them to get to the $200k-300k range. I'm hoping it'll happen. I don't see how the $400-500k prices were sustainable on the median income in my area. Bummer for the buyers, but c'mon...prices were 6x income! That was unsustainable. I felt it in my gut but bought anyway. Lesson learned!

That's not to say it doesn't make me angry to think of the money we'll be losing. I can't imagine being $150k underwater. Yikes! It bites to feel like you were doing the right thing (homeownership, we were led to believe, is the responsible thing to do) only to find out it was so wrong. It's an expensive lesson, and one that we're going to feel the effects of for a l-o-n-g time.

 

[dfchelbay]

Quote:
Originally Posted by disneyfans95 View Post
Nobody is being nasty. We might not agree on the topic at hand, but there has been nothing personal about it. I am sorry you feel that way and will avoid your posts and you can avoid mine in the future.

Oh, I will avoid you like the plague. I can disagree with lots of people, but you take the cake. All you have done is put words in my mouth. I don't appreciate it one bit.

 

[cats mom]

And in the end, we are talking about money, people's homes and it is very sensitive and personal. Some folks have a hard time talking about topics like this and not taking the discussion points as an insult to them.

True

The OP did ask:

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

Some of us are just addressing that question from the broader perspective of the real estate market as a whole.

The fact of the matter is that many people were looking to make a quick buck in real estate, many people were extracting appreciation gains as fast as they occured via HELOC, many people did buy far more house than they could reasonably afford, many people did take advantage of very risky loan products assuming that continued appreciation would keep them afloat.

All of the above affected the real estate market and contributed to the correction we are experiencing now. It doesn't mean that by bringing those points up we think they apply to everyone, or even to anyone, who has shared their numbers and/or situations in this thread.

IMO too many people still think there is some kind of unwritten rule that guarantees steady rates of appreciation in real estate. That may very well be the case (especially long term), but you could also end up barely breaking even (especially in inflation adjusted dollars), or you could end up losing a chunk of change. Personally I think the folks who make out like tycoons are the exception rather than the rule.

I think addressing those facts and trying to get folks to stop and really think about the economic situation as a whole, and their situation in particular, before they buy a house just because that's the American Dream is a good thing.

 

[wide awake]

Wow, people have gotten nasty on this thread. First...some people realized the market was going down when they bought, me being one of them. I had personal reasons for doing so, I assume they did too...not that they were idiots. Real estate is cyclical. Yes, my primary home right now is upside down...but it won't be forever, and it was a good buy in spite of all the negative things that have happened. I'm quite able to make the payments, as I'm sure many of the other posters are. None of us know another's situation...it isn't nice to make judgements. We all do what we think is best given the information at the time. If we make a mistake, oh well. We'll do a better job next time. And no, I'm not comme ci, comme ca about money. I majored in econ, I pride myself on excellent money management. That said...all of us are in a different situation. What is a bad choice for some is an excellent choice for others.

 

[pixiewings71]

News flash, selling your house can be risky. Nothing new there, yet you do seem very suprised by that fact.

Pixie I am sorry about your situation and I do hope you land a job ASAP.

Thank You, I hope so too.

Yep! Iowa actually has some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country I'm not a native Iowan... I moved here for a job! DH is from LA and he moved here for a job too!

hmmm perhaps I'll add Iowa to our list of places we could move.....

 

[NewmanFamily6]

Housing assessments worked in our favor. We were looking for a new home and the one I liked was priced at 549,000 but appraised at 500,000. So we were able to get the price it appraised for