If you bought your house in 2006/7...

[4speedy]

Special snowflake. This is a forever home for us. And my 6 yo tells me that when she gets married, she will build a house in our backyard for her family. So it doesn't appear as though we will be going anywhere soon.

[Deleted]

Our house dropped roughly 20%-we're just going to have to wait it out. I wish we could sell and buy a different house in our desired area. I regret not waiting and holding out for our forever house.
Eta-we've also put 20k into finishing our basement which we'd lose if we sold now. So essentially we'd be down more plus realtor fees

[agnes]

Bought in 2006

Long story short: House lost almost half it's worth in 4 years. Sold for a small loss - but almost broke even.

[magdala9]

DH and I each bought a house in 2006. His was in a rentable neighborhood and is being rented. The rent covers the mortgage, taxes, cleaning and provides a small profit. Mine was not in a rentable neighborhood and we sold it for a loss.

[julygal]

SS-we are waiting but not for the market. We want to see what DH's career does. Depending on what's happening in our neighborhood at the time we know what his next move is career wise, it could be anything from short sale, bring money to the table, become landlords, wait it out a bit longer, or hope a relocation package covers some of the loss.

[Deleted]

I already sold it for $80k less than the purchase price. :-( That is a big part of the reason we are in a very modest house now. My plan was to just live there forever even though it was really much smaller than I wanted with kids, but I changed jobs and couldn't take the 1.5 hour commute each way after our son was born. It was killing me.

We rented it out for a while, but the rent payments didn't cover the mortgage, and we decided to just bite the bullet and sell. The only consolation was getting into another house in a nicer area for a great price.

[ejpint]

I feel like our dip hit later. We bought in 2009 and home prices were holding steady in our area. We're now trying to sell, and our home is valued about $30k less than what we paid for it three years ago. It could be a lot worse, I know, but it still sucks a little.
We're moving this weekend, and we'll be renting out our house while we also rent in the new city. We'll wait until we either have more equity or until prices come up.

[monpetitchou]

DH and I both bought around that time. I paid 180k for my house and it is worth around 80, maybe. We rent it out for ~$175 a month loss. And the roof needs replacing. It's awesome.

We live in DH's house but will eventually rent it out too when we move on, hopefully in about 3-4 years.

[martygras]

Bought in late 2007, next move will be in 3-ish years and I'm hoping by then the market is better. Our neighborhood has had a lot of sales though around our price range so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[everam01]

We did a refi and are holding on for a bit. We're about 15K underwater, bought in 2007. Another option for us would be if DH gets a job transfer his company will pick up our mortgage until we sell.

[codec]

We bought in 2007 and things tanked not too long after. We were not super worried because the market is normally very strong here and we planned on staying here and updating in 5 years. Housing prices have rebounded big time now and because there is such low inventory there are mulitple offers on everything again. A house on our street went sale pending within 2 days with four offers...this has been typical around here. Now we are in the planning process of remodeling/adding on. I did look around to see if we should just buy a new house versus going through remodeling but the prices are just too out of control again. Which is fine because we do love our location and lot.

[takeonyou]

We are staying here until the kids are out of high school. But if we were to sell today, we would make money on it. But we completely gutted the house and rebuilt.

[tahiti36]

Does the first option also equal short sale?? You are selling at a loss, but not bringing money to the table.

[Pom]

Less of a bubble in Texas, we bought in 2006, sold in Dec 2011 due to a job change. We got a full price offer, only paid REA fees and 3 percent closing for buyers.

[8675309]

Bought in 07' -No plans to move so I put special snowflake. Thankfully we really did buy our forever house. We love the location and we have room to increase the sq footage if we want to remodel down the road.

[egishere]

Bought in April 07, sold for a small profit Aug 2012. We did put a lot of improvements into it that far exceeded the profit but we thought we were going to live there for 10+ yrs but got transferred out of state for work.

[cookies]

We thought we were buying our condo after the market crash in 2009. No such luck. We have to move next year for my job and including realtor fees, I think we'll have to bring $25K to the table at closing. That's half our savings and all of our future house down payment fund.

If we didn't have to move, we would have held onto our condo for a few more years or refinanced to bring the mortgage rate down to something that would bring the monthly payment closer to rental market values. If we rented it out now, we'd lose $300/month.

[AJL]

SS - DH bought the house we're in in June 2007. It's currently worth more than he paid for it. We have no intention of moving any time soon (too lazy and preferred area is too much $$$ right now.) So we're just hang out until we become less lazy.

[jenni232323]

We bought Feb 1 2006. We just paid off our 2nd mtg (did 2 to avoid PMI) and refi'd to go from 6.4% to 3.99%. We've put so much work into making this our own, that we're happy where we are for several more years and are staying put.

[smiley]

We bought in early 2008 and I chose that we would bring money to the table. I am so ready to move that I would pay someone to take the house from me! It'll be at least a year before we can do anything but we are both ready to upgrade.

[Doctorblue]

SS-no interest in moving at this time.

[WOT?*]

We bought in Dec '05 so I'll count in too.

This was a "couple years while we get the lay of the land but we need somewhere to put the furniture and we'll see how it goes" house. It's lost about $130K in value since we bought so we became a "holding pattern until the market rebalances." I'd like to rent and purchase another but DH isn't into that.

We now have the grands living with us. Older one lived here with us for several years and has friends here and at school. She's comfortable here so it's become our "until she's out of school" house. I'd rather we lived closer to town and with a view but this is a really good school and she loves it so we're reluctant to move. She's had enough change in the past three years and her sister for the past six; they need stability and we're here to provide it.

Maybe we can get a weekend place on one of the islands. That was DH's plan before the girls moved in. But that will be without selling this place for the next 11 years now. So instead of selling, we're remodeling to suit our tastes.

[chance22010]

Bought in 2007, going to try to wait it out but we can only be here another three years maybe. All our rooms are filled to the brim, we are completely out of closets and we want to possibly have another LO too. It will just depend, we'd rather live cramped then sell at a huge loss. Dh may disagree with that thought though

[sapphireblue]

I voted for sell at a loss since ultimately that is going to be what happens.

However, I am trying to also wait out the market and possibly in the future hold and rent. I think if I do that prices will rise a bit but I'll never get all of the money back.