A conundrum

The first time I applied for a loan, I didn't have a credit card yet. And they were like:

How can we know you're responsible with money?

Because I haven't needed credit in the past and I'm still alive, idk? Having enough liquidity to not need credit would seem to suggest I'm good with money.

But maybe your parents are paying for everything

Ok? How does using a credit card change that?

They are NOT looking to see if you are responsible with money. They are looking to see if they can make money off of you, so they want you to be a heavy credit user. Before I bought my house I made sure to take out two credit cards and just buy random shit on them for a few months because that boosts my credit score drastically which then made it easy to get the loan. Banks HATE people with limited debt because it means you are not a loyal customer that they could make money off of. Yes, it makes no sense but that's just how the economy works. Even if you don't have any reason to buy things on credit, you still should. Even if you are very financially responsible, you should always have "stupid debt," by that I mean debt for the sake of debt, because banks love that shit and it'll help you out if you ever actually do need a loan for something.
- That's the impression I get too
  But it's plausibly deniable enough because you can still get decent credit score if you pay off your credit before you pay interest. It's a numbers game for them, I expect, but still.
Considering how much data they can get on anyone, this process seems pointless and outdated, except to give them somewhat arbitrary power over who can get a loan.
Not that I like such private data to be available at any institutions fingertips, but so it is these days.

I saved up a big (to me) chunk a few years ago, thought I was there. Expected the red carpet to roll out. Nooooope. There were people buying houses for $100k more than the asking price, sight unseen, within a week or two of the house being listed. My little $40k deposit was adorable, in comparison. I had no chance. Then Covid, life, etc...

The 100k+ over asking was the big deal because that never made it into the housing data properly so prices looked like they were lower than they were and we don't have accurate comparison data now

I went from an apartment that cost ~$1250/mo. To a mortgage that costs ~$4300/mo. Just got the "privilege" of owning a home (and paying for all repairs myself).

I can only afford this because of the people I'm sharing that cost with. We're all on the deed, and we all have a stake, and claim to, the house. Four of us.

My payment didn't really change.

The only way we could get to the point of a down payment is that one of the four of us has been saving for something like this since they were in highschool. Because of their effort, we had enough for a down payment.

And I'm lucky to be in this position.

What a fucking crock of shit.

Despite all of this, I'm hoping the market takes a dive so the rest of you can do the same at a much more affordable rate. I've already spent the money and I'll be spending years paying it off. I didn't buy a house up objectively save money, I bought a house for stability. I never want to move ever again. There are good reasons for that which I won't get into. I promise that I will have ZERO issues if you all get a better deal than I did. I hope you do, and I hope the housing market, specifically the rental/flipping/"income property" markets crash, hard.

In the same way, I've paid off my school debt, I'm in favor of school debt forgiveness. I also enjoy pretty good health, I'm in favor of universal healthcare. I've never caused, not been the victim of a fire, I'm in favor of fire departments.

I could go on.

Good luck everyone.

In the same way, I’ve paid off my school debt, I’m in favor of school debt forgiveness. I also enjoy pretty good health, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. I’ve never caused, not been the victim of a fire, I’m in favor of fire departments.
That's commie talk son. We pull the ladder up behind us in America.
- I'm glad I don't live in America then.
Damn $4300 a month. I thought my $2600 was steep.
Right before we moved my rent had gone up to $2500 so it was a push. Now when we first started living there the rent was $1400 and the landlord had even refied so his mortgage was cheaper at the end. When we were moving out and he drove up in a brand new Rivian that I’m pretty sure I basically paid for…
- To be fair, it's a pretty large home. I'm living with my SO, my brother and his wife and there's a couple of offspring that needed space too. Our house has ~5 ish bedrooms. Considering the number of people who live here, it can feel small. If it was just me and my SO, this would be humungous.
  But that also means that we have four fully grown adults helping with the mortgage. So my share of the mortgage is around $1100 ish, per month, and we split most of the household bills, so I usually throw in about $400 more to help with that. I personally pay about $1500/mo.
  My SO does the same, and we've encouraged my brother and his wife to also do the same. If everyone pays $1500 towards the house every month, we have more than enough to cover all the bills (electric/gas/water), as well as shared things like the Internet. Also that's enough to cover the house insurance.
- Yeah, I went from $1200 rent to a $1300 mortgage but the city added $50k more value to the assesment so between taxes and insurance it's going up to $1700/mo next year so that's fun. I don't know how many more years of that I could afford cuz $2600 just isn't doable for me :/

"Landlords" are probably one of the oldest grifts in the book.

if you can't afford to own a home would you rather have no options to use one temporarily while you get back on your feet?
Mao did nothing wrong.
- except for causing that famine.

You can't even get an apartment here without making a ton of money. Cheapest studio apartment here is $1,500 a month. I have to prove i make $4,500 a month just to barely qualify, which i don't. Then they charge you so much for application fees, and then utilities they overcharge for, it's all a scam.

My issue wasn't getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don't give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you'll either figure it out or go homeless trying.

Yeah that was my experience as well. Mortgage companies were happy to pre approve me up to like 75% of my monthly income. Not even close to enough to buy even cheap food.
We probably live in different countries, but where I live it's more like you can't get pre-approved for anything unless you either have a large amount of money saved up, or your salary is high enough that it's far beyond what you would reasonably need to get paid to afford the mortgage.
- You live in Germany don't you
Fudging the numbers a bit, but let's say I'm paying $3000/mo for a mortgage. Brokers tell me I can afford $10,000/mo.
I cannot afford $10,000/mo.

The corrosive corollary to ever-rising real estate valuations is that there is no incentive to keep buildings like condos nice or neighborhoods clean, someone will buy at the inflated price anyway since they all are inflated.

So basically I feel in Canada we live in a system that pulls valuation out of thin air, produces nothing, incentivizes no one, yet allows everything.

Same shit happening in Scotland. Knobheads makin bids above asking price on slum complexes in the city like it's fooken millionaire row. Last landlord I had chucked a new tenant out and returned her deposit for complaining about the broken shower basin cos he cannae be arsed. Not exaggerating.
- I never thought I'd end up at a place in life where I worry about real estate valuations, but here we are. In my condo building, things are getting decrepit. I wondered why no one else seemed to care then I realized I'm in the minority of owner-residents, every one else rents out, so they don't care about how it looks. They just care about rents coming in.
  Then I wondered why they don't care about losing value, then I realized, no one is losing value, some units here sell for the same price as a single-family home in the suburbs, even with the graffiti and homeless people wandering the street.
- It's mad given that Scotland technically is quite pro-renter. You just can't enforce anything so landlords have learned not to give a fuck. A friend viewed a tennament they were trying to let with no kitchen (as in no cooker fridge or sink). Like something out of trainspotting.

Then there's all the expenses you didn't know about before you bought the house. If you don't have at least some DIY skills, you get to pay people a lot of money to fix things for you.

...BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled. In exchange, you get nothing. Congratulations.

Also, the 500 is just the mortgage payment. It doesn't include the insurance and property taxes and, at least in the USA, private-mortgage-insurance (pmi) if the down payment isn't at least 20%.
The monthly obligation can easily be more than that 1000. The savings is in locking the first half in at a set amount.
Yup. Oops, you need a new roof and a water heater, that will be $34,000.
- Hey, I just did these things! Water heater i was ripped off, which cost me $2600, and the roof i actually thought was a good deal at 17k. Not fun but the roof made me happy. The water heater actually destroyed my basement by leaking out...
I always find this to be such a poor argument.
Yes unexpected maintenance can sometimes be a huge problem, especially in the first couple of years, but after that you can tap into home equity and repair say a roof. Everything else while expensive is still cheaper than renting. Using the OP's example 1k vs 500, I can assure you you will never have consistent 500 repairs per month.
As for the taxes the people in my city nearly went ballistic when the city increased the rate by 5%. At the end of the year it costed me $200. Per month that's about $16. I've never lived in any apartment anywhere where rent didn't increase by at least $50 per month each year. Even if someone had a home twice as valuable that's still a very small monthly cost.
Additional once you get past the first 3ish years rent prices have greatly outpaced your mortgage and you will be saving a lot of money compared to of you were renting.
I'd like to wrap up with a question. If owning a home was such a sink of resources why do people become landlords?
- after that you can tap into home equity and repair say a roof.
  There's no, "tapping into home equity." There's only extending the mortgage with more debt.
  20 years ago my sister did all sorts of home improvements that she said were free because she was "tapping into equity". Now she's nearing retirement and complains she still has giant mortgage payments.
- Speaking to the post, I feel like there is a tipping point between OP and your points and the post is showing that. If you can convince the bank to loan you the money somehow you then start to build more capital which can pull you out of being “poor”. There are many variables and wildly varying degrees of this scenario, but once you start your ownership experience, some people can work it quite hard and build enough capital to own multiple residences and rent them out. (Those already in possession of capital are out of scope of OPs post.)
  Rent is paying the landlord for everything every month. No repairs lately? Too bad, you’ll still pay for the possibility. The exchange is that you should never worry about repairs (or taxes) as the landlord handles everything. Once the landlord figures his margins are too tight, they raise the rent. Lots of variables here too and that makes blanket statements about which is better more difficult. I advocate home ownership, but I feel terrible for young people. Runaway greed by those that already had the capital has changed things. The young folks I know that are able to manage it all had help from relatives.
  The act of convincing the bank and owning a home is getting more and more difficult. Impossible in many places and improbable in others without Herculean efforts. OPs post expresses this perspective.
I wouldn't say you get nothing from paying property taxes.
- Depends where you live. Where I live we just get more funded cops to more expensively harass houseless people.
Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house.
The cost of owning is significantly less than renting over the life of the unit. Repairs happen, but most of the time they aren't time critical, so you can budget out the repairs over months.
Unless the house was old when you bought it, you aren't going out of pocket on any big purchases inside the first years of ownership.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled
Idk where you live, but most states limit the rate at which an acessor can raise your housing price. In Texas, the cap is 10%. So your property taxes can rise, but the won't double overnight.
You can also contest the increase. Harris has been fairly receptive to a simple "my neighbor's house sold for X so my house should be worth about X, not X+20%"
- The cost of owning vs renting can be very different depending on where you live and work and the amenities you want access to. Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning. Unless we can start normalizing owning apartments again. You could own for cheaper on the outskirts of downtown, but you'll likely be sacraficing access to some amenities by doing so.

Bad take. In my situation it went from us paying $1900 in rent to paying $4500 in mortgage.

How??!
- While renting in some markets can be cheaper than typical mortgage for comparable homes, the amount indicated seems a bit insane.
  So either he is in a crazy real estate market, or there's some additional context that makes it a poor comparison (going from renting in Virgina to Mortgage in San Francisco, going from a 1500 qt ft townhouse to a 3000 sq ft detached house with a quarter acre of land, or going for a 10-year mortgage). Or he's just making it up or exaggerating because it's the internet.
  Interestingly enough that $4500 is pretty much exactly what it would be with 20% down on a $500,000 house for a 10-year mortgage. Of course, I'd expect such a house to rent for about $2700 rather than $1900. I could easily imagine he was renting a 2000 square foot 3 bedroom for $1900 and moving to what seems 'slightly better' 3000 square foot 3 bedroom with an extra special room or something, seeing that the 10-year mortgage is much cheaper in the long haul and going for it despite the huge monthly payment in the short term.
It depends on the market. Around here is similar, the market rental rate for a house is lower than what even the most lowest realistic monthly mortgage payment would be, but only by about 10% or so. I don't know if you also dramatically upgraded your home quality.
Not too long ago around here it was the same as the post, renting higher than mortgage.
Even then over long term, the mortgage would make sense, since you can sell and get back some of the money and your principal and interest won't magically get bigger because of market conditions.
In a sane world renting should be a touch cheaper than mortgage over the first few years, with tenants that only plan to be there 2 or three years. The owner gets a little income while taxes and insurance get paid and their asset maintained, and the tenant gets an easier and cheaper house to move in and out of for a short term living arrangement. Problem being when the market is upside down and when tenants are stuck never being able to build equity.
Well you made a choice. Either you knew you could make the payments for the price range you bought into, or you didn't read the repayments figures on any of the documents the bank sent you and made a massive decision uninformed.
I pay 20% more for my mortgage than I did on my rent, but the house is also better, I can easily afford it, and I made that choice willingly and I'm happy with that arrangement.
- The bad take I was referring to was OP claiming the mortgage payment would be lower than the rent payment. In the US this is almost never the case. Edit: we have fixed rate mortgages in the US. My payment will only go up because of taxes or insurance.

And while we're ranting about this, can we throw PMI and whomever came up with it on the bonfire where they belong?

Your telling me that I need to pay for you to have insurance in case I default while your also charging me interest who's very purpose is to offset risk? Why am I paying to offset your risk FUCKING TWICE AND HOW IS THIS FUCKING LEGAL.

Shit infuriates me. I want all the bankers to get William Wallace on live TV, recorded and played back once a year during a mandatory viewing window so that we never, ever, forget.

This is one of the reasons my wife and I took so long to get a house. I refused to pay this absolute SCAM. So we saved up to put 20% down. What a crock.
Shit infuriates me. I want all the bankers to get William Wallace on live TV
Thanks for the hearty laugh
Also if you were to default they would take your house and get the insurance money
Interest is not intended to offset risk?
Interest provides a return on capital.
If you have $1 youre not using you might let someone else use it if they incentivise you by giving you an interest in their need.
If you give $1 to 100 different people you might increase the rate for some of them to offset your additional risk, but thats not the purpose of Interest.
- Part of interest calculation is risk. That's why higher credit score leads to lower interest, it's less of a risk to the lender.
  PMI is double dipping. They can pick one, either a flat across the board interest rate for all borrowers or PMI.
  Didn't mean to imply it was entirely about risk.
The alternative would probably be (much) higher interest rates until you get below 80% LTV at which point you're "allowed" to refinance...but no bank will ever remind you of this in hopes you forget...or prime will skyrocket and you'll be stuck in high interest for an unknown amount of time.
I think you should put away the monkey paw before they get more inspiration.

I can't believe someone watermarked their worthless reply to a post that said the same thing more subtly and smartly.

Covid was the wake up call I needed to realize that while I understand the nuance many others need the point made for them to understand the point of the scenario. We understand Eleanor. Some understand Callum.
- I'd wager a lot more than some need a Callum to explain what they should think about anything, given the state of things.

The deposit is not to prove you can make the repayments.

Housing markets do, occasionally, go backwards in value.

If you have a loan for a house which is more than the value of the house you would have an incentive to just stop paying.

Thats why the bank needs a buffer, in the form of a deposit. Its not really nefarious.

you need to pay us interest because we're taking the risk. Also you need to give us a down payment to offset our risk.
- Correct.
  Less down payment means more risk and therefore more interest.
  Its pretty simple really.
It's a little nefarious
- nefari-ish, if you will.
If the loan is fixed at an amount or matched to inflation, you'd still have to pay or lose the house.
That's still a pretty bullshit excuse, because it's not like all that money you've already spent on paying the house will magically come back to you, you'd still be homeless if you lose the house, and the bank would still have a house available for the market, even if it's at a lower value than before.
- I'm not sure if you've really understood the dynamic.
  Suppose you buy for $700k, pay off $50k, but then the market collapses and the property is only worth $600k.
  You'll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.

Actually i guess the bigger issue is that we're gonna be unemployed in 15 years due to a declining demand of human labor and then who pays back what?

Today you could afford the pay-back rate, but not in the future, and the banks are well aware of that.

There is no declining demand of human labour, and there is no indication that it will ever happen. The way the labour is performed is changing, just like it always does
Joke's on them, I have a 15-year mortgage on my condo. (Lower interest rate than a 30-year mortgage, USA, ymmv)

They don't actually need regular payments for 10-30 years. They need you deposit that down payment cash ASAP so they can lease it to billionaires and crypto exchanges.

The deposit is to cover expenses/losses that arise out of defaults. Housing loans have been lile this forever. Not everything is a conspiracy.
- the deposit is the keep young, inexperienced and glowy-eyes people from making commitments they don't have the stamina to handle.
  it happens a lot that 20 year olds want to buy a house with their new partner that they think they're gonna be together with for the rest of their lives, only to have it all fall apart 5 years later. forcing to you save up a bit before actually buying the house means you go through a lot of experiences before you actually buy a house, which makes it more likely that you'll have the far-sightedness that's needed to actually buy a house. :)
Idiocy.
The bank doesn't get the down payment. The person selling the house does.
You pay that person the down payment, and the bank pays them the rest.
Honestly there's loads of great reasons to hate banks but lots keep it real and avoid making up nonsense.
- Banks typically ask for you to have cash in hand (deposited), or equivalent leverage, to qualify for loans in the first place.
  The bank I used actively tried to get me to go with less down payment, and subsequently take out a larger loan.
  But yes it is the height of idiocy to say, 'down payment deposit' when 'qualifying assets' is a more accurate term for the transactions function.

I hate to break it to you, but mortgage payments are not cheaper then rent anymore. Obviously depends on your mortgage and money down and all that, but if you expect to pay half as much for mortgage payments as you did for rent, you're going to have a very bad time.

Surely, this depends a lot on what market you’re in. If you’re in a very expensive area and need to take a big loan with a high fixed rate, I can see that being the case but renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
- renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
  Right, like I said, mortgage is not cheaper, certainly not half as cheap. The market I'm in is a metropolis, it contains every range of the market, it just depends how much gun violence you prefer.
This isn’t true in my experience at all. Either rent is cheap where you are or you’re looking at expensive houses or not for a 30 year period. The rate currently is around 6-9%. It would only be more expensive if the house is. No other hidden fees
- Parents and brother went in on a house together so he could live near work. Rents out the main floor for $3750 a month (3 bedroom) and that covers the mortgage so he can afford to pay the utilities and lives in the basement.
- Well in my very recent experience it is extremely, painfully, unavoidably true. That's why I said it. We just bought a house, 150k less than we qualified for, and our monthly payment is 33% higher than we were paying in rent. Rent is far from cheap, there's just no such thing as an inexpensive house unless you want one in a terrible neighborhood or an hour drive outside the city. In the first case, not only is it a bad idea just to live in these neighborhoods, the chances of making money on the resale are next to nil. The burbs option of course offers more for your money, but that comes with more maintenance, yardwork, housework, gas money, transit stress, etc. We worked with very knowledgeable, trustworthy realtor and mortgage brokers and there's simply no math in the current market that gets mortgage payments lower than the rent we were paying without buying a literal, active crack house.
  And to claim there's no extra fees involved with buying and owning a home compared to renting is either utter delusion or repugnant gaslighting.

Where y'all finding houses for 500/month with a 25k downpayment?

Seems cheap af. If you only did a 25k downpayment the mortgage would certainly be more expensive than rent where I'm at.

I bought a 2 bedroom single family home in South Carolina last year for $86k with only $11k down, 7 minute drive from the city center of the capital city (Columbia). Mortgage is $480/mo. Cheap houses absolutely still exist if you're willing to live in areas where "nobody wants to live"
My house was cheap in a shit area (like knuckle draggers shouting at hotels shit) and that cost me £800 a month 20 years ago.
And that was with a massive deposit. Still, paid that shit off now.
There will be shitholes in bum fuck nowhere but in this area rent will not be 1k lol
Would have been standard fare in Sweden until recently, but that’s obviously an outlier

To be the devil's advocate here. Rental payments vs mortgage payments is not an accurate comparison of the true financial burdens.

With many rentals some if not all utilities are included in the price of rent, whereas homeowners must pay the full cost of utilities. There is also the additional cost of home insurance and property taxes. Most rentals have the majority of their maintaince covered whereas the homeowner is responsible for lawn cutting, gutter cleanings etc. The cost of repairs and maintaince is not negligible. While renting if the heat quits or an appliance breaks, the landlord is supposed to cover the cost but owning means you must take that full cost.

In the posted example, having double the mortage payment in rent payment is probably adequate to cover the additonal costs but the comparison of renting vs owning is not black and white. Several financial managers have even studied that depending on your needs and income, you can actually be getting ahead financially by renting if you don't actually need the full benefits of owning and are able to maintain a store of wealth through other investments. This is especially true if you are in a rent controlled unit.

It seems like you are assuming an apartment rental and not a home rental. In my experience home rentals work very differently. Utilities are not included and you do end up paying quite a bit to maintain the home.

People don't want to twerk anymore!

At this point, yeah I would twerk on OnlyFans just to get a mortgage..

Yeah saving the money to buy a house is terrible.

i swear my pancreas, the hospital and my bank account are conspiring against me
- It took me starting my own business and throwing every dollar into savings to get a house. I advise anyone looking to get a house especially younger people to live at their parents as long as they can and save money that way too. But the standard if living keeps going up while pay stays crap too. It’s really hard. Every conspires against us. Life blows sometimes. lol

How fucking old is this? Unless it's a real shithole, mortgages have not been this cheap since Truss fucked up the economy

Yeeeeah, I was too adult in 2008 to go "you know the real problem? We check too hard for solvency when giving out mortgages".

Not that I have a silver bullet for solving a housing crisis. There probably isn't one. You need a lot more public housing as a percentage of the total pool, that much I can tell. How you fix a job market where nobody holds the same position for more than a handful of years is beyond me. You probably need to make it much more expensive to own a house without living in it or renting it out. You definitely want to make it much more expensive for corporations to own housing.

Guessing that's harder to fit in a pithy, viral tweet, though.

The biggest thing we can do for the housing crisis is making density legal again and allocating more space in cities to housing instead of parking cars.
- Yeah, that'd work a lot better for me if I was American and not painfully aware of similar issues happening in cities where cars fold like umbrellas and are almost entirely parked underground.
  I mean, don't get me wrong, you guys have a whole continent you can use for this, so maybe you can brute force it. Definitely not "the biggest thing" where I'm from, though.
I'm glad someone mentioned the 2008 financial crisis. Banks need to be fairly confident the person they are giving the mortgage to can afford the payment now and for the next thirty years. There are plenty of unfair reasons why someone may not be able to buy a home today, but not being able to afford a down payment is not one of them.

Come back with some inheritance and then we will talk.

They did this before it worked out really well around 2008

The problem here is inability to read between the lines. The [bank?]'s message is pretty clear: "Stop polluting my sight, you filthy poor."

Not buy a house, inherit a house from our boomer parents.

They'll sell it to pay for the elderly homes.
You'll only inherit the clay ashtray that you made for them in 3rd grade.
Boomer parents: emotionally abuses you for your entire childhood/teenhood
Me: Has severe depression
Boomer parents: "WHY ARE YOU SO LAZY AND UNGRATEFUL, USELESS EATER, BURDEN ON SOCIETY" then proceeds to threaten to leave me out of the will.
Funny thing is, she also threatens to leave my older brother out of the will. Basically she tries to make us hate each other, and we do hate each other. My entire family is dysfunctional. They are all conservatives, racists, LGBT+ phobic, has the toxic masculinity mentality, ableist af. They think anyone with a slight disability deserves to get executed because its "a waste of resources". This is why I dislike my ancestral homeland, it reminds me of hatred and intolerance.
Edit: Technically they aren't boomers, but I'll still call them boomers because they share that same boomer mindset.
Three kids, one house, we hunger gaming this shit?
'Cos two of us are married, there's kids and that house only has three bedrooms and no land for extensions
(I kid of course, my sister is inheriting my house when I inevitably explode)

I know a lot of you are urbanites, but for anyone who isn't, check out the USDA 502 direct loan program

My house was literally like 100 yards from being eligible for one.
- Front or back yards?
- my municipality fought the USDA redistricting in the 1980s and kept the hamlet where my house is in the program.

An ancient conundrum; you think anyone’s mortgage payment is £500, in any country? Ha!

My actual mortgage payment is probably just under $500. Taxes and insurance just put it at about $1000. I bought a nearly crack den quality fixer upper about 6 years ago in a moderately low COL area. In the truely low COL areas I imagine you might still be able to manage the same pricing today. It's probably doable, just not anywhere most people want to live or with a house that doesn't have a bunch of issues.
"in any country" took it too far, since there's places where you can basically buy a house outright for that amount. "Western/first world" wouldn't even cover it I don't think, with Italy and eastern Europe being a thing. Even in my very expensive western European country our mortgage isn't that much higher than that (we kinda lucked out), but of course once you account for all real expenses it is.

I've never paid a mortgage, but £500 seems pretty low. Do mortgage payments tend to be that much cheaper than rent prices?

Anecdotally I pay over 200% the cost of my father's mortgage to rent a home in a lower cost of living area.
Definitely not as low as £500… but mortgages are generally cheaper, sometimes much cheaper than rent. Example: we own a 5-bedroom house with a mortgage of $1,900, my step-son just moved into a 2-bedroom apartment for $2,200 rent.
- I was paying $3,300/mo rent back in 2020. Got a mortgage at the low rates of 2021 and got a $2,800 monthly rate. So it seems like it's cheaper. But once I add the property tax (_{$1,000/mo), HOA ($500), home insurance (}$300), it's not at all cheaper to own than to rent. Plus paying for maintenance on our own (had to replace both the fridge and the washing machine in the time since we moved) adds up too. Not saying it was better to rent, but it was definitely cheaper.
I think most of the people disagreeing with the post are from the USA, which has completely different costs/taxes/prices etc.
In the UK (as the original post is), it depends where you live - our mortgage is about £350 per month (5 bed terrace), but if would have been almost £500 a month without the deposit. Rent in the area is about £600 - £1500 per month, for similar or smaller properties.
Note that this is in Northern UK, in the sort of town sometimes described as "a bit of a shithole". I could get a train to a town an hour away and the prices would literally double - but the ratio between mortgage and rent would be pretty much the same.
Even with the cost of repairs, and a tiny bit on insurance etc, it's a significant saving. Also, the repairs actually get done, which was not the experience I had in rented accommodation.

500 Vs 1000? What year is it?