&gt;<i>Also, 3.5% in mortgage interest? That&#x27;s ridiculously high. Where I&#x27;m from you can easily get a mortgage with a variable interest of 1.46%.</i><p>I&#x27;m not sure where this even came from but: 3.5% isn&#x27;t &quot;high&quot;, historically.  And that fact that you can get a <i>variable</i> rate of 1.46% during a period of globally historically low interest rates has little relevance to the 20-30 years it will take to pay down your mortgage.<p>In fact, buying a more expensive house because you can get a super-low rate <i>now</i>, without accounting for future rates, is a classic blunder.