The idea for this blog has been ruminating in my mind for quite some time. Sean and I reside in a 2 bedroom condo in a very urban Phoenix neighborhood. We bought the blessing of a house at a high time in the real estate market, spring of 2006. As our equity in the home started to plummet, to the tune of $100,000, as I last checked in winter of 2011, I started to feel like our home was more of a burden then a blessing. Being ‘upside down’ in our mortgage felt like it was holding us back ...from what exactly I couldn’t find the right words to articulate. Maybe from a larger home with a yard for our beloved dog, bedrooms to someday become nurseries, from a neighborhood that didn’t require me to be on guard at night when I walked alone. From all the trappings that the American consumer culture showed me, we should want.
Then I made decision to start writing this blog as a sort of online journal, where I find all the things to love about our home and our decision to use our incomes as shovels and dig our way out of being upside down. To see where owning this property for the long haul will take us. To find all the “blessings” of being “upside down” in this mortgage. Mainly there are wonderful things about this dwelling and I wanted to document and number all of them. So on days when the burden feels heavy, I can look here and remember the good of our situation. In reality we are blessed beyond measure.
