My fiance and I are starting to look at purchasing a house. In my mind, it seems best to minimize the downpayment and keep my capital in the stock market where the returns are generally higher (in theory) than the appreciation on a house. MMM would advocate for projecting a 7% compounded annual return on capital in the stock market and a 1-2% (maybe??) simple annual return on capital invested in a owner-occupied house.
Obviously, the math is more complicated if you start factoring in things like applying what you would have spent on PMI as additional principal paydown.
I'm hoping someone on here has done the math, but if not, could be a fun project for me to work on myself and share the results. Let me know your thoughts!
P.S. I did a few searches and am not finding an in-depth discussion on this, but apologies if this has been reviewed here already.