[garinda]

A good post Margaret.

We have become obsessed with how much our homes are worth financially, and not what they provide us with physically and emotionally.

The only people who will suffer if prices fall dramatically are those people who have to sell, because of work, or who are splitting up, etc.

I was friends with a girl in the early nineties. She invited me round for dinner. I was a bit suprised that whom I assumed to be her flatmate, was her ex-husband.

They were forced to still live together because their flat was worth half what they'd paid for it five years earlier. They decided their best option was to carry on paying their mortgage until prices rose again, and they could go their separate ways, each with enough from the sale to start again.

If you go to many other parts of the world 'owning' your own property isn't seen as such a goal, and many people happily rent all their lives.

Renting might not be so bad here, considering that if you live long enough, the government will take the equity from your property to pay for any care you might need.