Hey Bob, are you telling it’s a better quality of life to live in a smaller place and have to pay more? Or are you saying it a better quality of life to live farther away from work and have to commute 1-2 hrs. each day just to live in a same sized house but in worse neighborhood and school? No one in this site is saying to never buy, we’re just saying not to buy now.

We have no problem with other people that have opposing view points. However, to make a debate more effective, please post data and let it speak for itself. Per your own statement, it would have been much wiser to continue saving and rent instead of buying your first house. Then take that additional saving and buy an even larger house than your 2nd house since you would have saved more for a down payment.

Talking about making money after holding a house for 8 years is pointless since you were lucky enough to buy at the bottom of one cycle and sell at the top of the biggest run up in history after the great depression. That’s like people who were lucky enough to be in the tech industry in the 90s, got a huge amount of stock options as a sign-on bonus, stock flew, cashed out and retire. Another analogy would be to buy Qualcomm stock in 1992 @ $0.52/share and sold it in 1999 for $92/share. How’s that for a return, 17,592% return after 7 years, or 2513% a year. If you put in $100k, you’d have almost $18M in 7 years. No housing boom can ever give you that kind of return. Bottom line is, those are not the norm, it’s an exception.