As long as they weren’t planning on it rising in value and refinancing they can just chalk it up as a bad investment, they weren’t alone. Where people made the biggest mistakes were those who needed to increase in order to stay.

I have a friend who made a similar decision but they sold in a much more expensive and equally bubbly market, took their profit and paid cash out here. They have lost a large chunk of equity because of the timing but they have checked current prices on their old house and would have lost double had they stayed, plus they don’t care, they don’t have a mortgage. They could have done better had they sat on the sidelines for two years and reverse flipped but in their minds, they did o.k., I can’t really argue with them about that, they could have done better or they could have done worse.

Your freind could also look at it this way, they may have lost 300k so far but they are only exposed another 300k, there are people and places that today have more exposure than that, so it can only get a little worse for them.