>>To be fair, you don’t really own your home until you pay off your mortgage.
You never own your home - first you rent it from the bank and the government, and then after you ‘pay it off’, you rent it from the government.
Wife wanted us to think about moving to a nicer home 15 miles from here (and 15 miles closer to work). Price is expensive, but not ridiculous for Massachusetts.
Property taxes $24K per year, or $2K per month, so *if* we bought this house, and *if* we paid cash, the rent would only be $2K per month...no thanks, I’ll keep ‘renting’ my current ‘paid-off’ house from the government for $550/month .
One of my the very first things I look at when house shopping is the monthly costs of carrying it - i.e. the things you can never pay off - property taxes and HOA fees among them.
After 30+ years of having a single house, I went to a condo community with an HOA. The snow removal and landscaping costs of my previous home alone come to about 70% of my HOA. Then when you factor in the amenities (i.e. swimming pool, clubhouse, etc.) as well as outside repairs such as roof maintenance, paving, etc., it becomes a wash - at least for me.