Luc, we definitely agree that housing is extremely market specific. With that being the case, here is my nationwide estimate for the US: half of current homeowners should be renting. Given that there are 80 million homeowners in America, that means 40 million people should own a home.

You sound like you fit the bill.

With housing being do dependent on location, I’ll skip addressing most of your concerns in a response. They make great source material for a future article, though, and I’ll let you know when I’ve written it.

My main contention is that of maintenance.

• Maintenance of a fairly recent house like the one I linked to above, is not as costly or involved as you may think.

Your house was 25 years old when you bought it, and you have owned it for 12. It is now 37 years old, which is the average age for all homes in the US.

On a statewide basis, New York takes the cake with an average age over 80.

Maintenance costs rise exponentially with age, and you address this, but barely. You assumed maintenance costs of $2,500/year, which is 0.54%, or roughly half of the minimum 1% annual maintenance costs you should budget for on the $459,000 house in your example.

If we budget for the more conservative 2%/year maintenance costs, the number is now $9,180.

The math changes quickly.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.