It’s ridiculous to say that happiness depends on home ownership, and equally ridiculous to pick an arbitrary age like 30 to serve as a benchmark.
Becoming intensely in debt (thereby forcing myself to work more) by buying into a ridiculously overpriced housing market, locking me to a single physical location that is destroying itself through disgustingly selfish infrastructure planning is not my idea of an advantage, financially or psychologically. I've never lived or visited anywhere in my life that has screwed itself up as much as the Bay Area has - they'll be lucky to be growing as well as Gary, Indiana at the rate things are going. The prices are not justified by wage increases (wages aren't matching price increases) or increasing population (the bay area is now starting to lose population), and combined with the idiotic local and federal politics + trade war economics, have nowhere to go but down.
On the contrary, I contend anyone that depends on the current prices for survival is a bag holder making an extremely risky bet. The evidence is already there that the bet is not going to pay off. My advice: unless you're very wealthy and don't care, or your plan is to go underwater in the world's most expensive retirement community, get out, now. If things go south, liquidity will be far more important for your financial and psychological soundness than debt on a sinking asset in a shrinking regional economy will be.
Don't buy a house because you feel like it's what you are supposed to do!
Now, one could argue we’re at the peak of the current business cycle and asset prices are overly inflated. And there might be merit to that. In that case, look for real estate bargains where you’ll have equity on day one (short sales, foreclosures, assets priced below their fair market value).
That's only true if the value of your portfolio or salary aren't increasing faster than the market.
I've personally teared up in housing about every other year. It would have been much more difficult to do this is I owned rather than rented.
What does this mean? Moved? Every two years? Sounds horrible. Don't you have any hobbies to fill your time?
Yes, moved every two years. Not ideal, but couldn't have afforded the places I moved into two years earlier and moving produces high quality of life gain.
Maybe it's years living in substandard student housing, or years in "not-in-the-US" housing, or even a couple of years being effectively homeless, but anytime I get more situated than living out of one suitcase and one computer bag, I find moving to be a burden that (generally) outweighs what you call the quality-of-life gain. That's me, and I'm probably inertia oriented in everything except the companies I start/assist/work-for. I love tuning the business to be better. But I often just go home, maybe to a dump or dive, and open a can of tuna fish for dinner. (My kids don't seem to understand that either - so I'm guessing this isn't normal)
EDIT: My (now) ex-wife lives in a nice house, with a fair number of upgrades, in a nice neighborhood. And my kids get to live there too - nice schools too. So, that's nice. But I don't think it is anything I would have ever invested in or developed for myself without her prodding. (Which might be why she divorced me, but I suspect it was probably slightly more complicated than that. But, still, it probably should have been enough!)
If you have reached the age of 30, you should already own your home. If not, buy a home immediately. NOW. If you can't afford anything decent close to your place of employment, quit your job and move somewhere where homes are more affordable. Your future happiness depends on it.