Every house has maintenance costs and this is the experience of all my homeowner friends. Betting on rising property costs may reap this back, but seeng what you can get for the average european family with 2 kids (up to 450k) prepare some parts of your home to be a construction site for a good part of the next 10 years.
I've never heard of home maintenance budgets being more than, say, 10% of the cost of a mortgage, and usually you're advised to budget only a few percent. Obviously there are outliers like when you buy a run-down old ruin and have to do a complete period-correct refurbishment, but hopefully people know what they're getting into in those rare cases.
Doubtful. On our £250K house stripping out the old heating system and fitting a combi boiler cost £4K, which is about 2%. Rewiring the house was another £2K. A reminder that you claimed above "Except owning a house costs way more than the mortgage itself", so even if all this stuff costs 10%, it still vastly cheaper than the mortgage (even of just the mortgage interest).
