The intense, intense, like your feeling pretty much dies down after closing and you can get a bit of a high having your own place. Assuming its a fixer upper (I have no basis for anything else given affordability in my lifetime) you will unfortunately get headaches with repairs and refurbishing and taxes and all that good stuff. Assuming you bought something you could afford with a 15 year fixed (now you see why my experiences are with fixer uppers) but got a 30 year fixed but overpaying on a 15 year timeline you will have a nice feeling knowing you can drop down to pay the minimum if things are tough and then if you can keep the overpayments going for 5 years or so you will get to the point where its almost impossible to be underwater which is a great feeling. If you have assesments (I have never had something with its own private lot) you can find that the taxes and assesments alone can be pretty close to what rent would be depending on how crazy or reasonable the rental market it but at least it stays stable at or below what rent would be so that is nice, but it never just goes away as an expense and even if you have your own plot if you are not spending what typical assesments are for upkeep then you are likely letting your place go.