Finally, this Fool.com article echoed my view of realistic tax benefit calculation for mortgage interest (see my previous post of Complete Financial Model of House Buying vs Renting).
The article also correctly mentioned that paying more attention to other possible itemized deduction items can be more important once someone buys a home and move from standard deduction to itemized deduction. And this is what I'm going to do during the year-end planning: I'll stay in standard duduction for this year but will be on the itemized deduction ship next year.