Good questions. Please note that this is only an example

I only use a simple example to show you what can be done. In real life, the situation may be a little more complicated. First, you are right, in a supply constraint job plentiful metro area, finding 25% discount is hard. In that case, you may be happy to get 10% discount. There is no strict rule about this, it all depends where you live and work. Yes, you are very right, although paying more in mortgage, your new house will be smaller in size than the old one. But it can still be more than 2300 sqft in my area. Loss in quality of life is not high and this is a good price to pay for adding more houses.

In real life, you have to pay something to get something, it all depends on the something you paid is worth it. I do believe that the sacrifice is tolerable while the future pay back may be well worth the sacrifice today.

Most importantly, when you start this game, you will get more accustomed to this kind of thinking, you will have a good habbit to move around every 3-7 years. Once in this mold, you may get addicted to it, and can't stop. That's a good habbit to havse, 10-15 years, you will start to see amazing results.