These kinds of comments are uncalled for…. I expect more from the people here..

Anyway… some of you may have misunderstood my posts, or perhaps I failed to articulate my situation properly.

I am not in some sort of a frantic state and trying to unload my home. I like my house. I would have no problem living in it for the next 10 years… maybe I will. I don’t know.

I did consult a lot of people here for advice, and a fair amount of you said to NOT buy. I sought advice from other places too. I got a variety of opinions. Many of the educated, well informed, and trusted people I talked to felt the deal I was offered was too good to pass up. Many of you here at Piggington told me to forget about it. Everyone has an opinion. My wife and I did a LOT of thinking about the ups and downs and we ultimately chose to buy. We knew we might wind up upside down.

Candidly, we thought that if we wound up upside down that it would not be by that much. We felt that getting the house at 350k was a good deal, and that at worst, our house would fall to the very high 200s or low 300s. We never seriously thought it would fall to the low 200s. Now wtih the way things are looking, it seems that it may in fact fall that low.

So at the time, we made the best decision we could given the information we had at the time. Now things seem to be changing into a scenario we seriously did not consider a reality.

If our house falls down to 275k…and I owe 350k… I’m not gonna run out and try to dump it. The hassle, etc of it all simply would not be worth it.

BUT if my house is suddenly worth $150, and I owe $350… and I’m facing a $200,000 negative.. then maybe the SMART thing to do would be to get out of it, walk away, or in some other fashion get rid of the house.

I’m not looknig to do anything crooked, illegal, or underhanded. I’m simply trying to make an educated decision. In hindsight, I should not have bougth when I did.

BUt, if houses get so cheap, that you could buy a house identical to mine – with the nice location, nice yard, nice upgrades, etc.. for $200k less than I owe on mine, then maybe the “experts” would say to walk away.

I’m not motivated by greed, or a desire to just get something for nothing..just to make a good decision given the current situation. as times change, so will what is the best thing to do.

we all make decisions in life. when I graduated from school and took my first job, I had several offers, some in different parts of the state – i made the best decision I could at the time. maybe I should have chosen a different job back then, maybe not. no one can say for sure. i can’t go back and change my decisiont o buy the house. but I do feel that when I made the decision, we felt it was the right thing to do. so I don’t regret what I did, in light of the info I had at the time.

HIndsight is 20/20. and while many of you here will say that I neglected to listen – I did listen. but I didn’t just listen to you all here. keep in mind, this is some real estate blog…with names…I have no idea who you all are. some of you are probably well informed and affluent and know your stuff. some peole here could be pulling info out of thin air and just running their mouths. I also took advice from professionals, brokers, realtors, friends, people who are in positions to make an educated decision. so I took the info here, and put it in teh pot with everything else. but never did I just say “i’m going to do whatever the random people n Piggington say to do”… maybe in hindsight I should have… but at the time, given my situation, given the info I had, I stillt hink I made the right decision…you have to look at decisions in the time/context which they are made.

it’s like Iraq. back when the deicsion to invade was made, a lot of people supported it. now in 2008, a lot of those people who said they supported it, would go back in time and say NO WAY. but back then – the info available was different. decisions are only as good as the info upon which they are based.

not trying to say I made the BEST decision…obviouslyt eh current market conditions show I did nto. but at the time, I think I made an informed one. given ALL the info I had.

so…now that I find myself in a declining market…I have to project what I will do. will I ride it out? maybe. it all depends on where the market goes. if it goes down a bit more, then I would probaby be well advised to sit tight and enjoy my nice clean house and not fret about prices etc.

but if prices fall to the bottom of the earth, and my house is 200k upside down, then maybe the smartest thing to do would be to get rid of it. i don’t know.

life is full of ups and downs. i never let the downs get me too down, because there will always be ups to counter them. and in the end, the most important thing is my family, my kids, and our health. All that is good. I know people who are doing far better than I am financially and I have seen them lose their health or their family due to not focusing on what is really important. so while I may post here, and ask questions, I don’t lie awake at ngiht worrying about the market and my houses value.

I am just a guy trying to do the best for his family. I make deicions based on the info I have, and sometime I make good ones and sometimes I make bad ones.

I married a wonderful woman – one of the best decisions I ever made was to marry her. I’d much rather have nailed that decision and mess up the house decision than the reverse. 🙂

as to crime – Temecula is no worse than anywhere else if you consider the socioeconomic levels of the population. You won’t get the volume of 187s in Scripps Ranch compared to Temecula or Murrieta, but that’s partially b/c Scripps has much much LESS n terms of low end housing – whereas Tem/Murr have more variation. Tem/Mur have a lot of nice areas where you find small amounts of crime/crappy people, but also numerous apartments/condos/lower end housing that attracts these types.

If you can afford to live in Scripps Ranch, I’d pick that over Temecula. If you can’t afford Scripps, but could afford a nice part of Temeulca, and had to choose between that or a run down part of Mira Mesa…I’d take Temecula.

But the bottom line is you will find crime everywhere that there are people.