Well, I guess you could find a home here for less than $300K, but maybe it is condemned or needs $100K worth of work (foreclosure on our street that needs that much work).

Then I guess we could live in a community with lousy schools and use our savings from the house purchase on private school. But at $30K/year per kid, and three kids, the costlier home in the good school district starts to look like the better deal.

We are in the Northeast. When we lived in the Southwest in a similar community, our home was one-third of the cost of our current home. All the other expenses seemed to be less too - groceries, various activities, etc.