Depending on where you live, homes are now also considered liabilities because of depreciative equity. And a big reason why people are walking away and letting the banks take them back.
Mine isn't - I know for a fact I've got about £50,000 equity in my house. (That's about $90,000 US).
It doesn't really depend on
where you live, it's more to do with
when you bought the house.
I bought about 10 years ago when houses were cheap and I've slowly chipped away at the mortgage in that time. The people who are buying houses now are suffering because they're buying at grossly inflated prices with high mortgage rates and they're not gaining much in the way of equity because if anything, the houses are now reverting back to what they're truly worth. People are finding themselves in negative equity and just walking away with huge unsecured debts.