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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For us:  bought in 2006 with very little down when they were still letting you take out a HELOC as a second loan without imposing PMI.  We bought near the top of the market, the house was kind of a dump and cost less than $500k, and the Zillow value of the property pretty much tanked within a year of buying.  When the market crashed, we were kind of stuck but also not in a hurry to get out because we had to live somewhere, right?  And the kids were so young school didn't matter yet.  We were paranoid about the outstanding balance of the HELOC putting us underwater, so we applied every cent of our would-be savings to paying it down. I wouldn't say we made lots of sacrifices to make it happen, but we also weren't out buying any big ticket items - like I said, we were kind of freaked out by having this huge HELOC and no equity.  We made smart upgrades over time and when we finally sold in 2014, we had been paying down the HELOC,  the house looked great and at closing we got a big enough check to support a 20% down payment on a decent house in an excellent school district.  I place very little importance on how nice a house is if it's at least livable and safe, but owning a property in a stable and well-regarded school district where we can now hunker down for the next decade or two feels good.  When the kids turn 5, that can really change the way you view what you do and do not have in a house.  Just buying to buy was the mistake we made.  We didn't actually need a house when we bought in 2006, and if we could have seen the direction things were going, we could easily have done better just renting.  That said, it left a very big impression on us being stuck with more debt than we were comfortable with.  I'm not sure we would have saved as much if we had not been stricken with horror that we had bought with almost zero down and the implications it had in a down market.[/quote]

Lesson learned, buy in a good school district[/quote]

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