Home owners of Lemmy do you have any advice on dealing with the stress of owning a home?
Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
I sure wouldn't say 'all'. The first years of your mortgage you are paying the bank more in interest than you are knocking off the principal.
A $300k home with 20% down and an interest rate of 3.5% on a 25 year amortization schedule will see the buyer paying $8k in interest versus $6k towards the principal at the start. Over the course of the mortgage, the $300k home will cost $420k thanks to the $120k in interest the bank takes.
The way people should think about it is not whether or not they break even compared to having not purchased the house. The real comparison is if they end up better off than if they paid rent that whole time instead.
If you bought a house for $300k, paid $420k for it over 30 years, and sold for $320k, you could think of it as a $100k loss, but you'd still end up $420k ahead of someone who had the same monthly payment going to a landlord.