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Everybody knows that you get a tax deduction of the interest paid on the mortgate. This means, if you make about $150,000 and paid $50,000 in mortgage interest and property taxes, your taxable income is $100,000 - you still fall in the 28%-33% bracket and you pay about $24k (fed) taxes

In other words, you should have spent 66% or more on the property (in the form of mortgage interest and property tax) in order to get 33% reduction in the income tax. Lets continue the example before, you should have paid atleast 2/3rd or 66% of a large amount - $50,000 i.e. $32.4k or more in order to save  or reduce the taxes by $8400 (it would have been about $24k - fed only). 

Lets say, you listened to me and rented in appartment for $24k per year. Then, as there is no deduction, you will pay up more taxes however, the difference as shown above is only $8.4k and the appartment overhead. So, I came up with a new formulae:

Mortgage interest + property taxes - tax reduction = Appartment rent + savings. In other words, if you did add up the mortgage interest + property taxes and subtract the tax savings (taxes on your income with and without prpoerty interest and property taxes) - it should equal appartment costs and savings.

This 'Savings' is now the key word for you to decide if you wan to buy a home or not. If the savings is considerable and you can convince your family members to stay and grow up in rental home/appartments, then, it is certainly not a bad idea. But wait!! What about appreciation?

I modified the above formul as:

Mortgage interest + property taxes - tax reductoin + property appreciation = Appartment rent + savings. In other words, if mortgage interest, property tax, property average appreciation minus the tax reduction is more than appartment renting and savings, you should buy a home. However, like I said before, if you want to buy it for you and your family pleasure, then dont worry calculating here. Just go ahead and buy. Good luck!!