I can paint the walls in my apartment and we have several free BBQs as well as ample event and leisure space. I also live within walking distance of all the shops and restaurants I could want. And I have easy access to public transportation.

Leaving my boots out isn’t worth half a million dollars and my spare time. I’m not muddy often enough to even consider where I leave my footwear. I worked in agriculture during college. It was literally never an issue.

My bicycle is in a secure storage room near my car and motorcycle. A security guard checks on them regularly, even when I am out of the country.

I have hobbies that I pursue outside my apartment. I even rent a garage with a friend for one of those hobbies.

Why does home ownership have to be made easy for most people? From where I’m sitting home ownership and “the American Dream” appear to be incredibly wasteful and not particularly appealing.

There’s a long list of things I would rather do than home improvements, regardless of how easy those improvements are.

Can’t we all just make the decisions that are best for ourselves?

I came here to make this same comment - renting forever is probably fine for people who are willing to accept a certain kind of lifestyle, but for most people it's too limiting. Got kids and want a playset in the backyard? Not in an apartment. Want a wall where there isn't one, or remove a wall that you'd rather not have? Again, nope. Want a home theatre with a big subwoofer so you can watch movies at home (one of my favorites). Nope, not unless you want some angry neighbors.

I don't think for a minute that owning a home costs less month-to-month over renting - with maintenance and upkeep, repairs and new appliances periodically, it's probably a break-even at best. But, at the end of it in 20 or 30 years I can sell the house and have that money (to buy a smaller house, or move into something senior-citizen appropriate, or a condo or whatever). With renting, that's not the case.

It also helps that I live in the Midwest, where property prices are not insane. I just sold my first house (made almost $30k over what I paid 18 years ago), and now I'm buying a 5-bedroom, 3k sq ft house in a nice neighborhood... for $230k.

Is it for everyone? No. But there's no way I'd rent, at least not at this stage of life.

The way I see it renting will always be more expensive because you have all of the same costs but you add in one other person to pay: the landlord.

Maybe the landlord can hire less expensive maintenance staff than you can, but maybe they can't. Is it really that different to have the house plumber come down and fix something vs. hiring a plumber from the yellow pages?

The landlord has to pay the mortgage same as you would. Maybe he gets a better rate because he can get some 1%er special equity deal, but fixed loans are like 3.5% so his margin can't be huge. He doesn't get a break on the taxes for the primary residence (although this went away I think?).

Ultimately it's difficult for a landlord to be so much more efficient that he can offer the rents at a lower rate and still make money.

Right, this is another downside to renting - landlords will tend to optimize for cost. So when a refrigerator or dishwasher breaks, it will be replaced with something reasonably priced. In my house, when the dishwasher breaks I can choose to replace it with something inexpensive, or I can spend a little more and replace it with a really quiet one that I can’t even tell is running (BOSCH are whisper-quiet, and totally worth the extra $$).

The rental market isn't based on what it costs to own a home plus a profit. It's a separate market and can often result in rents that are lower than the monthly cost of ownership.

At which point new rental units cease to be built/bought until rental prices rise to make it profitable again.

"Want a home theatre with a big subwoofer so you can watch movies at home (one of my favorites). Nope, not unless you want some angry neighbors."

How is that buy vs rent? Sounds like just house vs apartment?

Yes, that’s what I meant. The GP was specifically talking about an apartment. So yes, this one only applies if you’re not renting a house.

It has long been held that home ownership had a large stack of benefits for society over the alternatives.

For example, "Social Benefits of Homeownership and Stable Housing" (https://realtoru.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Homeownershi...)

"Research has consistently shown the importance of the housing sector on the economy and the long-term social and financial benefits to individual homeowners. The economic benefits of the housing market and homeownership are immense and well-documented. [...] In addition to tangible financial benefits, homeownership brings substantial social benefits for families, communities, and the country as a whole."

(Yeah, I know everyone is going to hate the "NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS" bit. But the citations and such seem reasonable. An older version is at https://www.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/migration_files/...) "Reexamining the Social Benefits of Homeownership after the Housing Crisis" (https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/hbtl-04.pdf):

"Turning to the policy implications, federal homeownership promotion effects have been at least partially justified by claims that homeownership creates better citizens, results in healthier neighborhoods, and provides a range of other social benefits. Thus, it is important to assess the validity of those claims. This is not to say that other good reasons for supporting homeownership do not exist, only that if homeownership is not generating the claimed social benefits, we should stop using them as a justification.

"The updated literature review presented above does provide support for several social benefits of homeownership. Even after taking self-selection and other confounding factors into account there is considerable evidence that positive homeownership experiences result in greater participation in social and political activities, improved psychological health, positive assessments of neighborhood, and high school and post-secondary school completion. The jury is still out, however, on several other claims including improved physical health, and both the cognitive abilities and positive behaviors of children."