Depending on what you include I figure property taxes, insurance, ongoing maintenance of my house and property are a good $1K/month (obviously with a fair bit of lumpiness for large projects). Some things you can postpone and some things you can trade money for your time & effort but it's still a non-trivial amount.

I'd love if all that was $1K/mo total. My property taxes alone are $1001/mo (for 2021; they went up a little bit last year, but I could quickly look up 2021 online).

Property taxes vary a lot. Mine are about $350/month.

$1K/month is probably low for me though if I added up all the expenses a renter wouldn't generally have although a renter also probably wouldn't be renting a house like mine for an extended period so it's a bit hard to do apples to apples.

In any case, living in a house is very much not free even once you're paid off the mortgage--especially if you make an effort to prevent a lot of maintenance debt from accumulating.

> I just paid a fifteen thousand dollar plumbing bill.

That has to be for commercial real estate, or you've been ripped off. There is no possibility of a single family dwelling ever having plumbing problems of that scale.

But maintenance costs are in general a landlord lie. They wouldn't rent out their properties if costs where anywhere near income. As for my own anecdote, my landlord has spent at most 0,5% of what he's gotten in rent from me on maintenance over the years. A normal tenant won't break anything or induce any maintenance costs.

That is a very believable number. I had a leak in my concrete slab last year. The plumbing bill was $20k, which didn't include fixing all the holes in the drywall nor the bathroom remodel after they went through the shower to jackhammer a hole in the foundation.