I am going to play devils advocate on your thought process of cheaper money compared to local HML.Crowd funding will make a little dent.. but its very very hard to take customers away from their existing lenders.

Hey there Detarus, coincidentally or not, I just read about you in a basketball article, you're playing some Pro-Am at the Courts, right?

The entire Liberal government has been really bad with this.My hope is that this plan to phase out natural gas will be scrapped as soon as someone sensible is in power.

It's just part of the game, if you decide to play.  

In fact it's a rather lovely LTV rate for the lending institution, very secure for them.For a primary residence I wouldn't monkey around with the value play too much. 

Here is a cool link that allows you to play around with your mortgage rate.  

Track down an engineer that is familiar with the area, play detective kinda fun.

There are opportunities, if you can play at that level.Less expensively, you can look at Danbury, CT; Albany, NY; Dutchess county; northern Westchester.I'm also considering the Berkshires and Eastern CT.

Mortgage payment on the more expensive property would be ~740/mo, on the cheaper one ~460+75, or ~535, though that doesn't matter as much -- where it comes into play is "what are the financials of the HOA like?"

Then you play the follow-up game!