As negative equity rears its ugly head again in the UK property market I feel it is time to tell my story and my experience of this rather interesting phenomena.
I have been unlucky enough to watch my property value drop on no less than three different occassions.
Once in the early 80's I bought a house for the princely sum of £26,000 and then sold it a few years later for £23,000 - which at the time seemed an enormous financial disaster.
Then in the early 90's a house I had been living in for a number of years saw its value drop from £38,000 to £32,000, the lower price being the one operational when I had to sell it in order to move for work purposes.
By the mid 90's I was actually trapped by negative equity as the property in question was valued at more than £10,000 less than the mortgage we owed on it and at the time we were not in a position to take that loss on the chin.
You would think that anyone who found themselves in this sort of position more than twice would be destined to a life of poverty and failure.
But that has been far from the truth.
If anything those experiences taught me a lot and the last episode of negative equity actually was the key to the independent lifestyle I now enjoy.
Because of that negative equity, my family was forced to start renting as tenants in the new area in which my husband had found work, and we were forced into the position of reluctant landlords in order to keep up the mortgage on the property we were stuck with in our original home area.
The difficulties in finding suitable letting agents both as landlord and as tenants, and the difficulties of managing to find and rent property out of area, and manage a tenancy many miles away from where we lived were many and complicated.
But out of that struggle the idea for LetaLife was born. Out that idea, came the reality. By the time Letalife went online we had been able to pay off the negative equity on the old property and sell it on. But by then we had plenty of experience as tenants and landlords and that meant we knew what we would have wanted in a property rental website.
It meant that we understood the stresses and strains involved and had a genuine impulse to alleviate at least a few of them where we could.
Not everyone will be able to get quite as much from a negative situation as we were able to get out of ours. But to all of you out there with this sort of problem I would say please don't let it depress you too much. It is understandable to feel down and frightened and anxious about all the financial implications, but read it up on the internet, find some good advice from somewhere and keep believing in yourself.
There is always a future and no matter how bleak things seem, they can always get better. It sounds glib and trivialising but money isn't everything and try to focus on the things you do have going for you at times of financial hardship. Relationships, friends,humour etc Look for something every day to make you laugh or smile.
Keep open to new ideas and maybe what seems like your very worst moment could just be the impetus to propel you into your very best of times.
Take it from someone who has been there, done that, and got the t-shirt - 3 times 
