[CottonBall]

There’s so much wrong with these assumptions, I don’t even know where to start.

My First Choice as a house would not be something over half a million. If that’s the price of a starter home, rents would also be outrageous.

The house we now have is probably about that amount. But we started off with a $90,000 house, paid it off, then went to a more expensive house. And so on and so forth. I never considered any of them an investment, just a vehicle to be able to store some money in to pay for the next house, until we were done moving. Which is hopefully now! Not to mention having a pretty nice place to live. If I was paying rent I wouldn’t be willing to pay $3,500 a month, I would live in some squalid Apartment since I’d be throwing my money away.

[DouglasKC]

The house we now have is probably about that amount. But we started off with a $90,000 house, paid it off, then went to a more expensive house. And so on and so forth. I never considered any of them an investment, just a vehicle to be able to store some money in to pay for the next house, until we were done moving. Which is hopefully now! Not to mention having a pretty nice place to live. If I was paying rent I wouldn’t be willing to pay $3,500 a month, I would live in some squalid Apartment since I’d be throwing my money away. Absolutely. I'm 62 and my wife and I are building our last house. 1652 square feet on a 2 acre spring fed pond plus 3 acres of land. But started off much as you. First house was cheap, second house we built. Third house was 50 years old, fixed it up, modernized it and sold it for a nice profit which enabled us to build our new house.