I love being a home owner in the current market. The appraisal for our refi came in $17k less than what we paid for the house in September of 2009. And that's notwithstanding that the house now has 25 new fiberglass windows that cost about $17k, too. We refied this time last year, without a hitch, but if we want to drop the interest on our 15-year mortgage down to under 4%, we're going to have to bring about $7k to the table to maintain sufficient equity.

Theoretically, I don't mind paying the mortgage down, but it still bites. The only bright spot in this is that from a monthly payment standpoint, we feel like we made a sound decision to buy what and where we did, but the loss in fair market value is depressing nevertheless as it makes us feel really chained to the house. We can't not fix the things that need fixing--many of which are costly--but it's sort of a black hole.