I rented until just recently (mostly 1 year or less, over 10 years -- lots of different places in the greater Boston area), and although I ran the numbers to make sure I wouldn't be doing anything too stupid, in the end it just came down to "I want to own my own home"

My spouse and I have done a ton of work on it, don't mind the maintenance issues, and we still get a kick out of just pointing to things and saying "that's ours!" (Okay, well... it's most the bank's. But still.)

I think "I'm sick of renting someone else's house" is a very non-negligible factor that's not often brought up in cost/benefit analyses like these.