> Also, it is a generally accepted "fact" that home ownership is good, and poor people should be encouraged to buy a house.

Which has the undesirable effect that it makes it difficult for workers to move to where the good jobs are, so now you have situations where workers are stuck in place A, doing job 1 for $X even though they should probably go to place B, and do job 2 for $Y -- because to move from A to B they'd have to buy a house in place B, and sell their house in place A, which is both annoying and relatively expensive.

This varies culturally, IIRC Poland and Germany - despite being neighbours - have different cultural assumptions about whether it's "normal" to buy a home rather than renting.

Maybe a shift to more Work From Home reduces the problem by allowing workers to take more jobs in place B despite actually living in place A.

> But we don't want a big fat house, we try and buy a normal house, but we really want it so we pay "just a little more than it is actually worth" and drive the price up "just a little".

The problem here is really with the supply of homes. If there was a good supply, issues like this would never arise, or would rarely arise, because there is always a house just as good down the street that you don't have to overpay for.

Part of the problem is the supply chain but I bet alot can be done by the govt to get out of the way. Of course the other side of the coin is activists that scream both: "We need more housing" and "how dare you build more housing" in the same sentence.

Imagine if billionaires used the 28% rule.

Important to compare like renting a modest Apartment. If that payment that works for you is X, maybe 3X is too much house? Houses also take a lot of repair, and need things like new roofs and HVAC.

Figure a well can be drilled for a few thousand. Depends very much on the area though, some locations you can get plenty of water from a small hole not very deep (you can pound a pipe into the ground - with a hammer, put a pump on top and get plenty of water). Other places you have to go very very deep to get water and even then you have to be careful not to use too much. And there is all kinds of in between. Worse, sometimes one side of the lot will have plenty off water and the other will not. Then you have to watch for local issues, keep the well far from the septic system (including your neighbors).

Good question. It didn't occur to me to check. A bit of Googling suggests that in my state a new well would indeed have been less that 0.26 $H. At the high end of depth for this area maybe 1/3 of that.

I have no idea if it would have actually been possible, though. Wells aren't allowed to be too close to septic tanks and septic drain fields, and there are other spacing constraints too. From what I recall of the way the house was placed on the lot and where the septic tank and drain field were there may not have been anyplace on the lot acceptable for a new well.

Almost certainly-if any new well were allowed at all.

Could also have assumed that a well problem would entirely fall on you (worst case) and budget accordingly.

Good luck rolling that into your mortgage

$H is the price of the house in OPs post.

Just a number he made up for a story.

I figured it was $100,000 but I could be wrong.