I guess I'm either making significantly more than people in my area who are my age or I must spend a lot more, but there's no way I could afford a $1122/mo house payment with my student loan bills and a small car payment. I mean, I could afford it, but I would be incredibly uncomfortable every month knowing that one missed week of pay meant a bill that wasn't going to be met that month.

I did at one point rent a room from someone who was making $35k/yr who had just bought a $90k house and couldn't make the payment. It wasn't much cheaper than an apartment and the person made it clear almost every day that I was only welcome in the house because I paid more than half of his mortgage every month. He was an ass and I had no rental contract with him, so I left. His house got foreclosed upon a couple months later; I was going to buy it from the bank but he had trashed the entire inside and ripped out chunks of the exterior wall. Anyway, this was just a long winded story to say yeah, I can see what you're saying about renting a room to pay the mortgage. It would still make more financial sense to just buy a house you know you can afford.