[BrianG]

I personally like the escrow route. One check to write (or rather, one e-bill to pay) and it's done. Yeah, the payment can increase as taxes go up and/or insurance changes. You can't do much about taxes, but you can still easily shop for other insurance. Whenever a rate hike has come about in the past, I've always gotten a letter prior to the fact (from various ins companies) which gives me a bit of time to shop around if I so chose (and have). I've never had a "surprise increase" in the last 10 years of owning my home.

Looking back, I personally don't think I want to ever own my own place again. Yes, it's nice to have equity and all, but to me, the disadvantages of home ownership outweigh the benefits. Something always seems to be coming up that needs repair. I can do small things, particularly electrical, but any larger projects, not so much. In my situation, my property became part of the flood plain a few years after I bought it. You can imagine that isn't a really nice selling point, so I think I'm gonna have a hard time offloading it when it comes time, especially in this market which is flooded with cheaper foreclosure opportunities. Really, my property's real selling value went down even though the tax appraisal value keeps climbing. So basically I feel "stuck" here until I've paid enough down to compensate for the market and crappy location, yet still get some kind of profit from it.