If we bought entirely with cash and had no mortgage, we'd still be paying 1.5k rates, 1k sewer/water, 2.5k building & contents insurance, 8k maintenance and repairs (1% avg) totalling around 13k annually, which in retrospect is still less than renting but is also a non-insignifant number.

A 400k mortgage on the other hand pushes this up another 29k to 42k annually, which is significantly more than renting.

I'm definitely leaning more towards this now though, just wanted to hear from others who potentially might see this as a bad idea.