We bought our new place in June of this year. Its a proper suburb. 30-45mins to downtown. Greater Houston area. Our new house is basically the median price, under 3000sqft with a decent back yard but nothing special. Its in an older neighborhood and it needed work when we bought it.

We purchased our first house in 2016 for 191 at 3.25% interest with 3.5% down. Homeowners insurance was like $1200/year. sold it this year for $295ish and homeowners insurance on the same house was at $4800/year. Bought our new house in June of this year for $425 at 6.7% interest and put 80k down (part of the equity we had in the old house we used for the down payment and the rest we put in our savings/emergency fund because I don't have faith in the booming economy right now).

If I were starting out again where I was in 2016 (i.e. same salary as I made in 2016 but today), I would not be able to buy my old house. Its crazy.

I personally feel like we are due for a reconning on all this, the house prices, insurance, and property taxes are not sustainable. The market is starting to reflect that too.

When we were looking at houses, there were several that had been on the market for over a year because they were overpriced by 20-30%. Our old house was not worth 300k to me, it was to the market and the buyer but the people who bought and lived in that neighborhood pre covid are different than the new buyers and that isn't a good thing imo.