I'm in that exact boat, I can't believe it took me this long to find this. I live in New Jersey. I moved up here in my early 20s for a gig that I no longer ha

I'm in that exact boat, I can't believe it took me this long to find this. I live in New Jersey. I moved up here in my early 20s for a gig that I no longer have, but in late 2006 I bought a house. This house has decreased in value by probably at least $50k (I'm out in the country, and honestly it's probably more like $75k). In the meantime, my new gig is as a freelance programmer. I don't have a single client that's even in the same timezone. I'd love to move back down to North Carolina, but the thought of losing this much money on the house has me stuck here, paying New Jersey cost of living and losing the same money slowly. There are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of households across America in the exact same position. It makes me pretty bitter at the policies of Fannie and Freddie 10 years ago in that "everyone should own a home" now appears to have been a disastrously bad idea for so many reasons.