[qes]

I'm not in a particularly hot real estate market - decidedly average.

It was abundantly clear when we bought that our location would not have a large apartment building built next to it - you can at least to some degree select for factors like that.

With all costs considered, we lived in a 2000 sq ft home with attached 2+ car, large shed, biggest yard on the block, etc. for a little bit less than it would've cost us to stay in our previous small 2 bedroom apartment in a equivalent enough location, assuming even that the rent remained the same for the past 10 years.

And on top of it we're walking away with $100,000 in equity. That is accounted for in the costs - but I'm not so sure that I would've actually saved that $100k if it hadn't been getting stuck away in the property value all along.

Anecdotal, of course, but it seemed like a no brainer at the time and in fact turned out to be such. It's not for no reason that home ownership is widely recommended as a good financial move.