Misery over real estate hasn’t ended—2.5 million homes are still worth less than their mortgages. Here’s the story of one Wall Street Journal reporter’s upside-down American dream. When the housing crisis hit, a charming cottage in a coastal Alabama subdivision became an albatross for Wall Street Journal reporter Ryan Dezember.
After looking at several houses along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, we decided the sunny cottage on Audubon Drive in Foley was the one—so long as the seller came down a little on the price.
It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an attached garage, a tidy shed that was painted picnic-table red and a pair of towering longleaf pines. It sat in an oval subdivision of cookie-cutter homes on a lot roughly the size of a basketball court. There was just enough room for the dog to run in the backyard without trampling the vegetable garden we envisioned.
It was convenient to my newspaper office in Foley and to the school in Gulf Shores where my wife taught kindergarten. The beaches along the Gulf of Mexico were a short drive away, but far enough to pardon us from flood insurance. The Realtor walked us over to see the neighborhood playground.
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