Oi Vey!

Well, today the appraiser came out to our house to discuss the value of our house. (If you remember--hopefully I've mentioned it--we had to have the house appraised so that we could accurately list it as an asset for DH's bankruptcy). Let me give you a few facts about our house first....we pay taxes on a $170,000 property (house and land). In 2003 it was appraised at $140,000, we thought that was probably high at the time, but...whatever. Our mortgage was for $123,000, with 10% down. It was just last year that we paid it down to where we no longer had to have the dreaded PMI on there any more. I've been paying extra whenever I can, and right now we owe about $109,000. It's been a good feeling to see the balance down that low so quickly.

But the appraiser just knocked the wind out of my sails completely. $99,000 was what he said our house/land is now worth!!!!! Oi Vey!!!! We are one of those people that you read about, "upside down on the mortgage"!!! Luckily we have a fixed rate and it's a good one, and I am still managing to make the payment on time, even with DH not working....we have no plans to move, so I don't know why this is bothering me so much, but it is. I knew that when all of this economic downturn was through, our house would be worth a lot less than we'd ever expected....but I didn't expect it to happen this soon!!!!

There is a silver lining in the cloud, though, because now I can take the appraisal down to the assessor's office and start paying taxes on a $100,000 house instead of the $170,000 that they've got us pegged for right now, so that should shave a few bucks off the over-all mortgage payment, right? I can see the good in that....but I'm really disturbed by the appraisal....