@ statmeister let me give you an optimist view on this. Using your repayment the total repayment for 15 years will be 113,000 * 12 months * 15 years == 20,340,000 Lets say you want this house and you think the Value is worth the 10 mil. You will need 1 million deposit and another 500K to 800K closing cost. Now you are a a well to do middle class guy being prudent and living within his means and you manage to save 50 K per month. PS this should ideally work for anyone taking home 120K. You said renting out the house would be half the cost but in reality the rent in kile never goes below 60K currently. Plan would be buy the house continue to live within your means in buru, uhuru or wherever. Put in your 50K into the mortgage repayment and have tenants rent go into the repayment. At the end of the 15 years repayment the owner will have paid half the cost of the house around 10 million through repayment while the tenant will have paid the bank it's interest leaving you with a house. Now if the house has appreciated you now have an assest worth more than you paid which is 10 million. Even if the house is not worth 20 million the owner can still make a profit because the value of the house will not have depreciated below 10 million. You can do this for cheaper houses. The only catch is the houses should have a decent rental demand. This is not a fool proof plan obviously. I know you will try and add repair costs, rates etc etc but I can also add ways of reducing total cost by paying extra into the principal repayment of the mortgage from the get go which can significantly reduce the cost over the 15 years and this can take care of the rates and repair cost.

Mortgage is not calculated like that, you cannot just minus what the property is worth, what you've paid and what you bought for, apply this formula and see how much you still owe in that house, the amount you've to pay the back if you sell the house today----B = L[(1 + c)n - (1 + c)p]/[(1 + c)n - 1] where, c = Interest L = Loan amount F = Points and all other lender fees P = Monthly payment n = Month when the balance is paid in full B = Balance in month n Banks are not stupid to just hand money to borrowers!