Originally Posted by sailingfun

We can agree to disagree. Homes appreciate. Consumer items don't. Owning a home leverages a large amount of capital with a relatively small upfront cost. You have to pay to live somewhere unless you have a great tent and a luxury underpass. The appreciation in a home compounds. The post above talks about living in his FO home forever. That's great but given what the market has done the last 30 years that cost him dearly. I recently retired and sold my last house to build my dream old guys house. I used the equity to build my current house debt free and still put a nice chunk of money in the bank. Over my airline career it cost me zero to live in nice houses. 200k down on a 1 million dollar home produces a 20% return on that money if the home appreciates 4% a year. As the home value compounds that 20% return goes up and up! It's likely your payment would actually go down over time with refinancing. If you worst case choose to rent your payments are only going up over your career.