Unless she was making north of 100k yearly that is an excessive amount of debt to take on. If instead she would have bought a less expensive house she would be in a much better position today.
Her mortgage payments + real estate tax were amounting to 38% of her gross income when she first took the mortgage. Experts and mortgage companies now agree that real estate payments greater than 31.1% should be avoided at all costs.
She's a social worker, not comfortable with finance. She had little desire for other life comforts other than a home. She sat down, realized that she could make the monthly payments, and thought it was safe since the market continuously kept going up.
If someone had been there to tell her that the home purchase was too high given her salary, she would have thought differently.
