Thread: Anyone else "underwater" on their mortgage ?

I paid 78 for a 2 bedroom condo in a 55 year or older only community in 2004. In 2006 it was worth about 125 to 150. Now it is @ 50 if I'm lucky and I owe 70. Not that big a deal for me if I can keep up the mortgage (30 year fixed) because I bought it figuring to stay until I croak. OTOH, it felt good when it was worth more on paper than what I owe. Anyone else in this situation that cares to admit it ?

Luckily, no. I know quite a feel people that are in that situation, though. It's quite a blow to realize that your house is worth half (or less) than what you're paying.

Best of luck to all.

We have only our nose hairs sticking above water. We would be lucky, but we'd probably be able to sell our house now for the balance on our fixed rate mortgage and we bought our home in 2003, a $40,000+ reduction in value. We live in a small town north of Mpls/St. Paul by a tad less than 1 1/2 hours. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but I think it may take decades, if longer for the value to even come back up to where it was when we bought it. With fuel prices what they are now and will continue to be, unless there's a viable affordable inexpensive mode of rapid transit to our area, no one has been moving that far out of the metro in approx five years.

Even if things bounce back in metro areas, my area would lag behind an indefinite amount of time.

That's OK with me, though. I count our blessings and can't stand living in the metro any longer. We didn't plan on staying here. But now, we're resigned to probably staying put.

Chris L

We're about even at the moment. Sucks. But it could be a lot worse.

In rural Wisconsin, we don't see the highs and lows as drastically as some other places like Detroit(my hometown), but a lot of folks in this country are in this type of situation. A lot of them wish they were at the 20k negative equity mark. I am a real estate appraiser by trade, so I deal with it every day. The upside is that we will likely see low interest rates for the next decade and we will likely have some form of mortgage legislation passed in the next few years to help people in a negative equity situation.

Not underwater, but we are in the process of buying a new home, meanwhile our current domicile is not yet sold....

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