God no. I used to think that. I was right there with people who complain about things like "I only got approved for 1200 months mortgage but I pay 1500 rent and it's frustrating); but the reality hit me hard once we bought our house. Mortage is such a small percentage of home ownership. First; is that with or without "escrow" (property taxes and homeowners insurance)?

What about PMI? Cant come up with 20% of the principle then you literally pay the mortgage company's insurance policy that protects them from you. It's usually over 100 bucks a month and that doesn't got to any principle or interest payment. It's you paying an insurance policy against you for them.

Your homeowners insurance policy will only cover you if you hit certain milestones. Like, replacing a roof. Where I live a 30 year roof has to be replaced every 15 years to maintain insurance which you have to have if you have a mortgage.

The repair and replacement costs for anything related to your home will blow your mind. Stuff you're used to calling your landlord for will come out of your pocket instead and it is INSANE.

Owning is still, after all that, worth it, but renting vs owning is not a dollar to dollar comparison. Sure; houses usually gain value. But they also cost exponentially more money to maintain. You can gain 20% in equity then replace a roof and be back in debt.

One of the questions I always have when this question pops up is have you done analysis of what the income vs cost of living is vs other places? If 400k is your floor and you make $128 combined that doesn't sound like a place you probably can afford living in. I personally dont think you make enough money to make it work.

When we first got here we thought we needed a 350k home to be happy (this was nearly 3 years ago so thats like a Florida McMansion) and we didn't get approved for it so we had to reduce our search to 250k houses. We found one and it was just as good as a 350k (at the time and in our opinion).

Have you opened up an app like Trulia and zoomed out and looked at houses that are more affordable and see if you can have a slightly longer work transit time to save a crap ton of money?

I wish you luck