I don't think i could ever be a renter again. When we moved here, we bought our house lease to purchase, for 6 months. The whole time I felt uneasy. We had sold our house in Tempe 6 months before we moved to MA, and moved into an apartment not too far away. It was really hard for me to drive by my house while I was in an apartment, even though it was all part of our plan to move back east. So, that meant we were renters for a year. We had a year to do the lease to purchase, but once we got our finances set, we could not wait to get the mortgage. Seems so long ago; that house cost 165,000.
Funny, the condo will be our 6th home, and I have only been emotionally attached to 2 of them... the one in Tempe and the last home we lived in, in Boxborough, before we moved to Concord. I think it has to do with the stage of life I was in. Although things were fun when we moved to MA, we ended up in a town that was not a good fit, and I spent 6 years just waiting to save enough to move. When we moved to Boxborough, it was like our life got back to normal, as it had been in Tempe.