You know what is depressing? Owning a house is basically trying to own your retirement old age home. Unless you start saving like 30k+ in your mid-late 20s every year, you won't actually own a house until your mid fifties because mortgages are rentals with additional cost like interest rates, insurance and maintenance costs. Not to mention even if you did outright own your home, it is still a f*cking rental, "why, because tax?" You say, no! Because HOAs! Not only do you still pay them a few hundred dollars rent no matter what, if they deem you in violation of their rules, they can just foreclose your house and take it away, even if you paid it off after 30 years!

There is no such thing as home ownership for regular people. It's just a marketing term. If you own something, there are no conditions for you to be allowed to keep owning it outside of violations of the law. If paying a private entity and following that entity's rules is a requirement then it is rental with extra steps.

"But equity!" You say? Hah! Haah!! a savings account at a bank could do better. For most people, after accounting for interest payments, assuming your home value went up, just beating inflation is difficult.

Let me put it differently, it your insurance, maintenance cost, interest payment would be more than or close to rent cost then it's a terrible deal.

If your income is a 100k then since you shouldn't spend more than a third of your income on housing, let's say $30k/yr is your housing budget, in states with decent jobs (cali,texas,ny,etc..) you would have to save that much for ten years or pay mortgage and wait like 13-15 years before it is yours on paper, and then you get to pay at least $1000/mo in overall costs on it for the rest if your life.

The best you can do is buy land without hoa or deed restrictions and cheap insurance and build. If you're lucky and can WFH then finding a rural land with internet should do the trick, but if you have to commute to a big city/suburb you're screwed. Best to pay cheap rent, save up until your late 40s (if you start in your late 20s/early 30s) until you can afford to buy/build outright or pay 60%+ downpayment and take a risk.

The true cancer is HOAs and house owning as an investment being legal. If only there were more high rise condos without messed up HOAs. HOAs have a purpose but their lack of regulation makes them enemies of the public.