I agree that monthly payment is the key factor people consider. I think there's more to it than interest rates, though, let me demonstrate: I took a generic mo

I agree that monthly payment is the key factor people consider. I think there's more to it than interest rates, though, let me demonstrate: I took a generic mortgage calculator and ran the numbers (30 year mortgage) on your house (first two rows), and on a South Florida townhouse that used to be mine (second two rows), to illustrate: Price Rate Monthly Lifetime 60000 9 483 173798 90000 7 599 215558 142000 7 945 340000 309000 3 1303 468992 Note that the monthly payments are 24-37% higher in their after scenarios, even with a low, low interest rate for my townhouse. I see this scenario playing out over and over again and people assign the difference to interest rates when crunching the numbers suggests there's more to it.