genejockey 

Well, part of planning to be Equity Pirates is just how much cheaper housing is anywhere else. The local real estate market REALLY distorts you view of things! Apparently the median sale price in San Mateo this year is 1.8 Million, and San Mateo is not one of the fanciest suburbs. So, when you see a 2500 sq ft house, with 4BR and 2.5BA for $350K, it seems like pocket change. AND there's a phase that I went through, where the houses that caught my interest were essentially the kind of house I always wanted I was young and dumb. So, for example, I spent about 2-3 weeks totally obsessed with a big brick house in the same county where I grew up, which had balconies, and high ceilings, and a grand staircase, and even a back staircase (for the servants). It was built before the Civil War! It was gorgeous! And only $210K!!!

BUT totally impractical! Especially for a retired couple - 11 foot ceilings are great LOOKING, but you pay to heat 5' of head space you don't really inhabit. Those big windows look wonderful, but they're single-pane, wood-framed casement windows that probably leak like a sieve. A grand staircase is great, but there are SO MANY STEPS, because of the high ceilings. The there are questions like how do you air condition ALL THAT SPACE, including the 5 ' of headspace on the first floor. Then there's the location - a small town which is losing population and is a good 20 miles in any direction from hospitals, healthcare, any good sized grocery store, etc.

So, of course, we didn't buy it. Not that we were ever going to. But I kind of had to go through that whole thought process a couple times to exorcise the whole "House You Always Wanted" thing from my thinking. Now, I looking at places more in terms of actually living in them as increasingly old people. No small towns, no big houses.