How much was your total mortgage? Because housing prices have gone up dramatically in the last 15 years, and the math that worked back then (in terms of total mortgage amount, monthly payments, etc) doesn't work anymore today for a lot of people.
We bought a fixer upper (borderline tear-down) for roughly 2x my income at the time (and then sold it for 2x after 5 years after fixing it up). But just for argument's sake, let's say you buy a house (or apartment) for $400k, which you can absolutely do in DC (for example):
