I have never really thought about this before, but I realized it might be interesting to people. I also read both threads, because I live in a house split down the middle of both threads. Ha Ha!!!
My SO's paid cash for his half of our house. He was close to FIRE and wanted the extra benefit of a paid off house.
I'm a late comer to FIRE, and to grown-up jobs, so I used leverage to buy my half of our house. I could have used everthing I had saved to buy my half of the house, but decided leverage was the better choice for me, because I was still in accumulation.
Getting my mortgage was an interesting saga because he had no credit history, not bad credit obviously, just none. That's been fixed.
Currently we are both not working: SO (FIRE'd) me (laid off), but we both feel financially very secure.
I can easily make my mortgage and living expenses on unemployment and have a fair EF. But I also have a large amount of assets.
I get that those assets are down (on paper), but I have been saving for longer than three years, more like a decade, so some of those assets are still up. I'm still very happy to have those assets instead of a paid off house and no assets. I understand that doesn't have to be the two choices, but my income is not as large as some people on the site. I prefer my fixed 30 year mortgage and every extra penny going to the market.
Leverage for the win, for me. The other guy, in the house, does things different.