Life - I hope your house is not close to Detroit as I understand that property values there are practically non-existent. A buddy of mine's parents had a house in a suburb of Detroit. After they passed away, my buddy couldn't rent or sell the house so finally just let it go for taxes.
If your house was in the central valley or the northeastern part of Calif, it would probably be worth about what it is in Mich but if it was located in certain cities around the silicon valley it might be worth millions.
Actually, mortgages work very differently than what is described above. If you were to borrow $200K from the bank you would typically have a 30 yr mortgage with an interest rate of about 4.5%. The payment would be $1013 per month and the total amount paid to the bank after 30 years would be about $365,000.
Nah don't worry, I live up north in the woods. Closest big city is 2 hours away. Closest down is 20 min away. Well you obviously know a lot more about mortgages then I do.