A house price is a house price, you can't say it's only 20%.
> You have to count the total amount you will pay on the mortgage.
Yes. That's what I was counting, I have spent less than $214k on my house, repairs and mortgage.
Your comment after that was edited:
> A house price is a house price, you can't say it's only 20%.
What are you talking about? The question is could he have afforded a house for $214k, and the answer is yes. Houses in that area don't cost a minimum of $1 million, even the house he attempted to steal wasn't worth that much.
The only thing I can think of is he is using extremely suspect math and a lot of that 214k comes from "sweat equity" billed at a ridiculous rate. Otherwise he'd easily be able to afford a mortgage in that area with 214k down.