SDRealtor. I don’t know that I can help. My wife started pushing to upgrade homes 2 years after we bought our current one and we have been in it now for 8 years give or take. Her view is that we should live in the most house we can afford. My view is that we should live in the house we “need.”

Because of changed family circumstances, we now need 3 times the house we have, but I don’t want to spend the max I can afford if I can spend much less and get what we need. If I can get that for $2M great, that is what I will do. If I must pay $5M to get what we want, then I will, but no more (could not anyway with a conventional mortgage). I suspect I will find what we want in my sweet range of $3-$4M, preferably on the lower end of that range.

Although I have seen my equity in my current house drop dramatically this past year, I still have well over 55% equity in my current house and I like that feeling. In this market, 20% down won’t buy me much equity after a year or two so I prefer something closer to 25%-35% to buffer further market depreciation in case of emergency (the better buffer is to not overpay to begin with of course). After I buy, I will follow my philosophy of agressively paying down principal above the min payment until I have at least 70%-80% equity, depending on my starting point.