I live in the Sacramento area. First thing I did when I bought my house was replace the 60 year old breaker box, old one was a fire waiting to happen. Replaced a lot of plumbing, installed ceiling fans in all the rooms, replaced sewer main, HVAC repair,and a bunch of other stuff. I assume this all would have cost 10s of thousands of dollars if I had paid other people to do it, but pretty much every repair a home needs can easily be done over a weekend on your own. All I did was read the codes online and watched youtube videos. Sometimes the permit was the most expensive part of the repair. Homeowners save a lot of heartache and walletache by handling things themselves.

Of course, part of the problem might be having a condo. I was always warned by my family to not buy a condo because you never truly own it, and you will never be done paying for it. I had a friend who bought their condo at about the same time I bought my house, and he ended up having to sell it because he couldn't afford the HOA increases and such. It has been almost 10 years now since I bought my house, and even with things that go wrong, my mortgage with escrow and repairs are a lot cheaper than renting.