In my area the interest rates are still 7% for a 30 years fixed. 6.4% for a 15 years fixed. Decent houses in decent locations are $500k-600k+. Sometimes there's interesting finds in the upper $400k's though.

Pre-COVID in 3% interest rates world, the big thing was 20% down for PMI avoidance. But now with interest rates being so high, PMI is basically negligible in the equation. Both interest rates and house prices are so high, that you question if you really want to leave your money on something that moves slower than the stock market (HPI is way lower than good stocks/funds) while also having to face the annoying leeching of your net worth by 7% of the loan amount a year.

So on one hand, you want to have even more down (30%+?) just to keep the mortgage payment lower as well as mitigate the leeching impacts from the interest on an otherwise larger loan. On the other hand, one can argue a mere 5% down and accepting a hefty mortgage is fine as long as the income is sufficient. So that all that money which would've otherwise been put into equity on the house would instead grow at stock market rates to outpace the HPI and leeching impacts from the now larger loan.

Any thoughts?

100% srs

No way rates coming down in a meaningful way anytime soon