I bought in the town of Mount Rainier right at the bubble–as well as few other unlucky people on my street.

I have fought my tax assessment and will continue to do so.

Recently, there have been 3 or 4 short sales/foreclosures on my street alone. My mortgage is for 300K. My house needs kitchen, back porch, one bath only,other work. I was thinking I would need to sink money in…but that value was good. And then bubble burst. I am now thinking I will walk away from my home because I don’t see how I will ever even break even. See issue below.

The foreclosed houses went for 86K…3 bed, 2 bath, new kitchen…Now…those folks will be able to sell at 200K and make money if property values even begin to rise. But the real question that is in my crawl. How will their property taxes be assessed should they debate their assessment.

I was told I could not use short sales or foreclosures to get my taxes reduced. However, can these new owners use the actual sales price of their own property as evidence that their tax value should be based on the their sales price? I can’t seem to get a straight answer from county and plan on calling state.

Because of the Homestead Tax credit…then–these people’s base line will start much lower than mine….Similar to all the old timers in my neighborhood who have been here for 10 years or longer and bought when MR was considered a bad neighborhood. You could buy a house here at that time for oh…say 80K or 130K….so their baseline tax rate started much lower too.

So here I am ….mortgage is upside down, I need to make improvements…and I pay and will continue to pay more taxes than others that bought before me or after me…and people wonder why people are walking away from mortgages.

Can you say screwed?! Even if I sold my house at $300K..what about those closing costs…. My house on zwillow was listed as $186K…right.

Any thoughts. And I did do a mortgage restructure at a lower interest rate but did not address principal. And Bank of America kicked that back into the principal of the mortgage along with fees..so though they reduced the % on a sliding scale that will cap at 5%-they did me no real favors when you look at the big picture and the helping hand they got from the government.

I feel like I am imprisoned by this house–and really am beginning to hate it.

From a moral standpoint, I don’t want to walk away. Plus I like me neighbors. But financially, this house is now a very bad financial decision that I am paying the price for–yet BAC made many bad financial decisions and was rewarded with profits and bail outs.

Any thoughts as to what I should do?