Sounds like you made a good investment. You could turn it into a rental. Rent it for 3 years & then sell it. You would still get the exclusion for 2 of the last 5 years & make some money in the 3 rental years.
The interesting part is we really didn't see home ownership as an investment. We wanted to raise our only child in a good neighborhood and with good schools. Now that our child has graduated from college, been working for almost 3 years, has moved out of state, and we retired in the middle of 2017, there is little reason to remain in California (other than for the weather).