I’m not saying that tax considerations are unimportant. But the extra tax deduction from buying is not Interest + Property Tax. It’s that amount less the standard deduction. Because of the standard deduction ($10,300 for married filing jointly), the tax savings from buying for modest to middle income families is not as great as advertized.
For example, if a 60k/year family at a 20% tax bracket were thinking of buying, and they were contemplating paying $20k/year in mortage int + property tax; their tax savings would be $9,700*.20=$1,940 (and not $4,000 as often advertized by agents).
I’m pretty sure that for many families, if they did their tax returns with standard deductions and compared those same returns with Interest and Prop tax deductions, they’d see that they didn’t save as much money as they expected.
