re: How much home can I afford?

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Ok so 2400 then then about 16000 over 7yrs

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When he can easily avoid it by simply not having it and it's no sweat off his back and money he doesnt have to just light on fire.

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Then when the water heater breaks you have to pull from the reduced savings you now have or get taxed out of your 401k

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The guy makes $110k/yr, has at least $125k saved up of which I never said he should burn all $125k or close to that and you're worried about him replacing a water heater which is about $1500?

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This one is always my favorite
So if values dropped 30-40% how would putting 20% down have you in any better of a postion?
You will be upside down either way

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Short of 2008, a ridiculous drastic drop like that is EXTREMELY unlikely to happen in the housing market any time soon. After the bull run of the last year+ though in the housing market, it shouldnt surprise anyone to see a correction happen there once supply chains start to get back to normal. We wont see a 30-40% drop for that, but it could be 5-10% and if you put 5% down on a home, well, there goes all your equity and now you have no access to things like:

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Or even better go and get a Heloc

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You do realize to get a HELOC you have to have at least a decent amount of equity in your house right? If you have 5-10% equity, good luck getting a HELOC.

Again in this guys situation who is not even close to being short of money, he doesnt need to pay PMI for a place for himself so there's really no reason he should put himself in that situation to just burn some money to keep a huge chunk of cash for himself. It's a different situation if he said he had $25k available, but it's not the case here. He has $125k at least....and I'm not saying he should run out and put $100k-$125k down on a house. I said $60k-$80k on a $300k-$400k place which still leaves him at least $45k-$65k...so I think he could afford a water heater or two still.