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.

I always find this to be such a poor argument.

Yes unexpected maintenance can sometimes be a huge problem, especially in the first couple of years, but after that you can tap into home equity and repair say a roof. Everything else while expensive is still cheaper than renting. Using the OP’s example 1k vs 500, I can assure you you will never have consistent 500 repairs per month.

As for the taxes my city nearly went ballistic when the city increase the rate by 5%. At the end of the year it costed me $200. Per month that’s about $16. I’ve never lived in any apartment anywhere where rent didn’t increase by at least $50 per month each year. Even if someone had a home twice as valuable that’s still a very small monthly cost.

Additional once you get past the first 3ish years rent prices have greatly outpaced your mortgage and you will be saving a lot of money compared to of you were renting.

I’d like to wrap up with a question. If owning a home was such a sink of resources why do people become landlords?

after that you can tap into home equity and repair say a roof.

There’s no, “tapping into home equity.” There’s only extending the mortgage with more debt.

20 years ago my sister did all sorts of home improvements that she said were free because she was “tapping into equity”. Now she’s nearing retirement and complains she still has giant mortgage payments.

I never said it was free and I never said it wasn’t a debt. Like obviously it is a debt, anyone that reads “tapping into home equity” as meaning free money doesn’t understand basic finance.

It doesn’t have to extend your mortgage. You can take it out as a second line of credit as an additional loan to pay back monthly. Obviously the ideal would be to have the savings to cover necessary home repairs, but if you don’t this is typically the cheapest way to get a loan to do necessary maintenance.

Sounds like your sister used her equity to refinance her loan and recieved a payout for the difference. That’s going to restart your mortgage and is probably not the best way to go about accessing home equity.

So yeah don’t take on reckless debt you can’t payback. You can responsibly use your home equity for maintenance if you need to though.

Second line of credit or mortgage, its still debt.

Your suggestion translates to “Don’t worry about home repairs, just take on more debt to pay them.”