Baker is done with being a homeowner. Last month, she stopped paying her mortgage.
“Who says that my American dream has to be a home with a white picket fence and all of that?” says Baker, sitting at her dining room table.
But that’s not what she was saying three years ago when she bought her four-bedroom home in a distant suburb of Washington, D.C. Baker was about to turn 40 and felt like she needed to own.
“I was like, ‘Wow, you know, I need to have a home. I need to be in a home,’ ” Baker says. “My birthday was in September. I purchased the house in August. So I got the house before I turned 40, but it wasn’t a great investment.”
A Bad Investment
She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won’t sell for more than $225,000 now.
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