So my context is... 40M, I got divorced beginning of 2022. My ex wife wanted to keep the house. She didn't fight me much if I acquiesced to her keeping it. The cost to her was 93% of our savings & investments plus a cash-out refinance to buy me out of my half of the absurdly inflated value. If she got the house she agreed to waive all rights to my pension and retirement account. My lawyer said that was a big win & to take the deal before she changed her mind. Luckily for her she was able to secure a 3.75% new loan just before rates skyrocketed. House would have had to be sold otherwise and she would have fought me for every penny.

That was about 17 months ago. I've been living in an apartment since then. A pretty nice apartment that I like, but I'm throwing away money on rent.

Here's the deal - in this new inflated RE paradigm - half a house's equity is not enough. I need a full house's equity. Total available funds that I've got add up to about 400k. That's everything. I have a public job that comes with a defined contribution pension that will pay out approximately half my ending salary in retirement a fund they contribute to that will probably have about 175k in it when I retire that you can either take as an annuity or a one time payment. On top of that I'll get social security if it doesn't get cancelled. So I'm somewhat less concerned about funding my retirement.

Best chance I've got appear to be new builds in a town that's 45 miles/50 minute commute out, they are selling for about 375k out there. I can get the payment down to 25% of my gross out there with a 40-60% down payment. (My rent payment is currently 25.2% of my gross; given my known contract raises and likely rent increases, I think it will stay in the 24-27% range of my gross for the next 3 years). I can arrange work to let me go into the office 3x a week. The town is small and rural, 1 hour from the city I work and about 1 hour 45 minutes from the big major metro around here. But it appears to be getting "trendy" - ie: there are now food truck pods, breweries, and other "trendy" accoutrements that have preceded big RE runups in all the places around here.

Nowhere closer offers anything even close to that price. The town 25 minutes out starts at around 450k. The town I live in starts at about 550k. I can get the payments down on one of those if I put an enormous down payment - like 50-75%.

So my question for you all on this sub is... how much is owning a house worth? Is it worth putting ALL my savings into it? Is a 1 hour one-way commute worth enduring in order to own one?

Something to note - if I do the far out commute option, I need to price in the cost of buying a fuel efficient hybrid or electric car.

A frustration I have is that I don't need a big house... but that appears to be all that's for sale. Existing houses are *absurdly* priced... it's weird that these new build tract homes appear to be offering the best deals.