insert teeth-gnashing here

[vsp]

After reviewing my options, my finances and the realities of housing costs in southeastern PA, I have one question remaining:

How the hell can _anyone_ afford to buy a house?

A two-story colonial just popped up in my old neighborhood for $250K -- actually reasonable compared to most housing prices in suburban Philly. I had some interest until I fed the numbers into Freddie Mac's calculator; the end result was a likely mortgage payment + taxes + insurance + PMI combo of $1800 a month. And that's BEFORE figuring in higher utility bills, maintenance costs, school taxes and other facts of life.

That's over DOUBLE what we're paying now as renters. As much as I'd like to stop feeding the rent monster, that's just crazy to consider on a combined $70K income. Then I have to figure in that we're thinking about kids at some point, a whole new bundle of expenses on top of house-ownership costs...

About the only affordable option would be to slice my hopes in half and look into a low-to-mid townhouse... but the problem there is that townhouse life doesn't really present any advantages over apartment life. It has all the problems of apartment living -- limited parking, neighbor problems, noise complaints, privacy issues, increased fire hazards -- but YOU get to pay all the taxes and the maintenance.

I'm struggling with the concept of why I should pay $10K+ up front and a higher monthly bill than I pay now for the _exact same living environment_ we have now, probably worse given what I know of the closest affordable townhouse community, hoping that it'll be worth what we paid for it a few years down the road and that we can pawn it off on some other first-time owner.

Time to start playing Powerball.