I'm glad it worked out for you, but it just seems like a poor idea for most people.
But there's so little risk! Free 20% equity? Why not?
What about not having cash reserves, in case of a large repair, or a job loss?
Default and live rent free until eviction
No, the real answer is that the house is
so damn cheap that we can pretty much afford it whether we're working or not. The mortgage (including taxes and insurance) is a little over $700 a month, which even for a minimum-wage worker or person receiving unemployment is still only 50% of their income. With two able-bodied, competent adults it would be
hard to suck so bad that we couldn't afford it.
We qualified for the loan based on my wife's salary alone (and she's a graphic artist). Given my earning potential with a STEM background, the plan was ultra-conservative regardless of our cash reserves.
In fact, we actually have both been unemployed for significant amounts of time* in the 3.5 years we've owned this house, but I haven't even needed to take money out of my taxable investment accounts, let alone miss a mortgage payment.
As for needing a large repair, I've got my DIY skills, my credit, and my parents to fall back on (in that order). Oh, and my lack of hedonic adaption, too (i.e., there are some things that a normal complainypants person would "need"to spend money to fix, but that I just deal with).
(* In my case the unemployment is due to being picky about jobs -- I've been trying to work as a transportation engineer even though the job market around here is really bad for that. I recently decided to bite the bullet and go for computer programming jobs, and found one within 2 weeks at 50% more pay than I was making as an engineer, despite not having done any real programming in over 3 years.)