<prompt> Human: I would like to own a home as soon as I am confident in my jobliving situation. Apartments are cramped, and after you know youll be working the area for a few years, it feels like a waste of money that could go towards building equity. I recently learned about piggy-back mortgages, but they seem like one of those things that are too good to be true. Do they normally come with a catch of some kind? It comes off as the buyer gaming the system, and no real estate firmbank is going to let money go if they can help it.  <response>: I think piggy back mortgages are the epitome of the type of over leveraging that led to the housing market meltdown to begin with. That being said, thats precisely what wife and I did about 6 years ago for the house were currently in. Fortunately, my wife and I have been blessed with good paying, stable jobs and we were able to pay the 20 mortgage off fairly quickly, and the other mortgage is likely to be paid off by end of this year. If I could do it over again, I wouldve liked to hold out for another year or 2 so we wouldve been able to finance 80 LTV or even less and put 20 or more down. The amount of interest paid that first year was really sickening but made filing income taxes fun and that coupled with property taxes far outweighed what we wouldve paid renting so we wouldve come out financially ahead by a fair amount if we waited.The 20 loan always has a much higher rate too... I think our standard 80 mortgage was around 5.25 and the 20 was close to 7, which was good for that period of time. You can probably expect the piggy backing loan rate to be 25-33 higher than the main loan.Yes, it seems like renting is throwing money away and it kind of is although it is paying for your shelter grin. When you own a home, however, the amount youre paying to service the loan financing charges, property taxes, and other similar surprise gotcha expenses associated with home ownership are similarly throwing money away although youll get some of it back via income tax deductions. Only the amount towards principal is retained as equity plus however much the increase or decrease for that matter the value of the house itself experiences due to market conditions and things outside your control.TL;DR - not a fan 