After reading the responses, and using the biases inherent in me, it seems like this isn’t as much a financial decision as a lifestyle decision.
I grew up in a single home (with a two year diversion to a temporary location in a different state.) My wife had a similar experience, with a single change of location in her early teens. That is the life we knew, and the life we wanted for our family.
Yes, there were apartments early in our marriage, but within about 5 years I had settled in to a career and we bought a condo. A couple years after that, I got the itch to go out on my own, so we sold the condo (with the gain in value covering our selling costs, so we got our cash back) and moved north and rented again.
That failed pretty quickly (about 6 months), so we moved back to the “home” area, rebuilding savings and eventually buying the home I still occupy today - almost 30 years later.
By settling down in one place, we achieved our goal of providing a stable home for our son.
As a side note, my parents still occupy the house I grew up in. And at this point, they are there for the duration. My wife’s parents stayed in that home until several years after her mother died, when her father remarried and moved into his new wife’s home, finally selling that house. My siblings also live near by - all of us living within 10 miles or so of our childhood home, so I have deep roots in this place.
One financial thing I’ve seen touched on only briefly - with home ownership and a fixed mortgage, your monthly payments (for principal and interest) don’t change with inflation. So if you stay put, a large part of your housing expense is fixed for as long as you remain there. Yes, taxes and insurance will increase over time, but you do get a material protection from inflation. And that P&I cost can be decreased over time if you refinance when rates drop lower than your current mortgage - or just to reset your amortization to a longer time frame.
I’d also point out that it pays to learn to do as much home maintenance as you can yourself. Twisting screws, hammering nails, and painting go a long way to keeping minor repair and maintenance costs in check, particularly in the younger years. I learned those skills from my father (and a bit from my father-in-law as well, since his skills were somewhat different from my father’s). With the internet available today, almost all of basic home repair and maintenance can be learned on line, so you don’t even need the pedigree of a parent or similar tutor - just the willingness to learn.
–Peter
You’re going to pay for a management company that then hires out every common area repair or maintenance job to their contractor buddies at top dollar.