During the great recession things were slow, including my profession.  

@J Scott has always portrayed you as free from such dark recesses ;-)

The house has lost about $10k in a 5yr span on the auditor site from recent appraisals, but that was also through the recession.

And massive run up.coming out of the 70's when you could buy a nice home for 25 to 50kwe had the first run up mid 80's.. then the earthquake and war set off  regional recession. and values crashed hard from 90 to 93  then plateaued  ..

So it is with areas of tough economies.Locally, we have areas such San Bernardino that have never entirely recovered from the Great Recession of 2008. 

It's an absolutely great area, close(15-30 minutes depending on town) to one of the best cities in the world, with a seemingly bulletproof, recession proof real estate market.

Hypothetical ScenarioI pay 200,00 for a house15 years later I have paid off 190,000 of the 200,000My equity in the house is now 190,000 (not adjusting for appreciation or depreciation)I pull out 70% of what I own in this home because that is the max the bank lets me take out against the propertyA recession hits and every house goes down in value including mineMy 200,000 dollar house is now worth 150,000I still own the house, my mortgage is on a 200,000 dollar home even if it is only worth 150,000 at the momentI am in the same situation as everyone else who has a mortgage and a house worth less than the mortgage they are payingQuestionsTaking my money out of the house has no negative impact on the property right?

Jacksonville is pretty flat with a dip for the recession.

But with lawmakers going on recess in August, will they be able to pull it off in time?

For me, these markets provide opportunity for short term cash flow investing or quick turns (flipping), but are not safe wealth building markets (unless you're buying at the bottom of a recession like 2009-2010).I'm not an advocate of cashing out of mature markets, to speculate.