Yep, two points to add to the monthly costs approach: 1) you still have to correct the nominal monthly fees for nominal income levels of households, roughly 50

Yep, two points to add to the monthly costs approach: 1) you still have to correct the nominal monthly fees for nominal income levels of households, roughly 50k in 2008 to 70k today. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N 2) the monthly fees is not a full expense figure. A 30 year mortgage that gets paid off 100%, has 3.3% of principal paydown per year on average, versus 2.8% mortgage rates. That means a good chunk of the mortgage payments are in essence savings, rather than money you'll never see again like interest. That's always going to be true, but the share of your monthly fees that goes towards principal paydown (i.e., equity that is building up, money that you actually own) is now much larger, as the interest payments per dollar borrowed came down.