[Skellibert]

Many years ago when I bought my first house, we stretched ourselves to get in when interest rates were already high - from memory around 15%.
Then interest rates blew out to 19 - 20%. We were a year into ownership, and my hours at work were cut.
We had to sell the place as we just couldn't afford it (and we were too proud to cry to the parents for help), and with the situation we ended up having to find about $4000 to clear the fees and bits and pieces. Huge loss for us, and we thought that we would never own another house.

Scroll forwards about 20 years and we found ourselves with the opportunity to build a house about 10 years ago - This time we signed the contract and everything was locked in - by the time the house was completed 11 months later and we moved in the market had gone stupid and the house which cost us $230K was valued at $400K.

In the last 10 years the value has basically not moved. maxed at about $420K currently sitting at about $390K.

The point is that with every investment you sometimes win and you sometimes lose, and you can't always tell which way it is going to go.

You take your chance on the housing market - IF you can hold on long enough, it will (pretty much) always rise.
We couldn't hang on first time and lost out.
This time we caught the start of the rise, and there is basically no way that we can drop below what we owe.

Life happens - do your best to deal with it.

Oh yeah - our first house which cost us $89K is now valued at over $400K - if we had been able to hang on then, we would have won. We couldn't, we lost....
But it is all good in the end.