Dream House or Nightmare?

It's not just builder's remorse. Since the home was built partly with an inheritance, Roger feels a special responsibility that the money left to his wife by her father turns out to be a wise investment. It doesn't help that because Roger served as his own general contractor he chose many of his home's pricey extras. Their house has a $40,000 epoxy-metal roof with a lifetime guarantee, hurricane-proof windows, superefficient insulation and an emergency generator. They're great safety and energy-saving features, but Roger doubts that buyers in the current market would value them anywhere near what they cost.

The Elliotts are also realizing they have more house than they need. Like some of the people described in Daniel Gross's story in this week's edition of NEWSWEEK, Roger regrets building a home that has so much unused space. "If I could do it again I'd do it a lot differently. I'd scale it back in every area," he says.

Roger Elliott is hardly the only one obsessed with the value--rising or falling--of his home. While people in parts of the country that missed out on the late, lamented real-estate boom may be unfamiliar with this affliction, in coastal markets where prices soared it's common.

This summer New York Times columnist Michelle Slatalladescribed how she had begun checking the value of her Bay Area home (using sites like Zillow and Cyberhome) every few hours. In a recent two-month period, the Web suggested her home had lost $92,248 in value. "I really, really need every tiny bit of information I can get about managing my biggest investment," Slatalla writes by way of justification--before consulting experts who tell her the sites aren't very reliable and she'd be better off checking her home value only once a year. Financial planners spend oodles of energy convincing stock investors not to panic-sell amid market declines. It's conventional wisdom that you're better off not checking your 401(k) balance very often. The same is true for your house value. I'm mildly obsessed with my home's value, but I only Zillow it every couple of months--and even when the numbers aren't pretty, I try not to let it upset me. After all, I have no plans to sell it.

Roger Elliott hasn't found that happy place yet. Lately he's been crunching the numbers, weighing how his declining home value--on which he's paying taxes, insurance and mortgage interest--weigh against the cost of renting a nice home. "If we have $750,000 in our house, and we walk away in three years and don't get [at least] $750,000, that means it would have been a bad decision," he says.

Roger admits his parents probably wouldn't recognize the anxiety he's feeling. "They bought a home thinking they were going to live there for 30 years and pay off the mortgage," he says. "It wasn't 'We'll live there for five years and pocket some money.' It wasn't an investment game for them." Then again, they couldn't imagine living in a $750,000 home, either. "We've kind of oversold ourselves on the need for our homes to be investments," he says reflectively. He's right, of course. And as those years of double-digit returns fade into memory, watching your home's value feels a lot like watching a young child play in his first soccer game: we should be content to love it regardless of how well it performs.