Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house. If you don’t have at least some DIY skills, you get to pay people a lot of money to fix things for you.

…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled. In exchange, you get nothing. Congratulations.

Yup. Oops, you need a new roof and a water heater, that will be $34,000.

Hey, I just did these things! Water heater i was ripped off, which cost me $2600, and the roof i actually thought was a good deal at 17k. Not fun but the roof made me happy. The water heater actually destroyed my basement by leaking out…

As long as you didn’t get a rental water heater, you did not get fucked.

I have no idea what that is, but I dont think I wanna know. I did want tankless on demand, but the service guy convinced me it’s not worth it, and I regret my decision. Said I won’t save much because the power draw is much higher than a water heater, so even though the heater is always keeping it warm, the on demand still takes more. I think I may have needed additional wiring for the electric and believe that’s really the reason he swayed me away.

Sounds like it is not common where you are, consider yourself lucky. Where I live, all new houses are built with predatory rental water heaters. $50-100/month forever. You end up paying the purchase price many times over. Electric tankless heaters use an insane amount of electricity when they operate. Overall they are more efficient, but the wiring needed to supply it will greatly increase the price, often requiring a panel upgrade and possibly an upgrade in service to the house.