When the options are "pay hundreds to a couple thousands of dollars per month for 30 years or less" v. "pay hundreds more than that per month in perpetuity", it should be entirely unsurprising that the former is vastly preferable.
This really should not be surprising, considering the number of SFHs owned by landlords using their tenants' rent payments to pay for the mortgage and property taxes and profit on top of that (that being the situation of my now-deceased father and still-living stepmother, whose landlord has on multiple occasions jacked up the rent to cover the new mortgage payments from refinances).
Generally if you are living in a place where you can't afford to buy, you also shouldn't rent in the same neighborhood.
But that's not what happens -- e.g. people move to San Francisco and then see the high house prices and convince themselves they can afford to rent there but not own. It's not cheaper to rent, on average [there is a lot of variability and opportunity for trading gains in real estate due to leverage] -- but overall, the price of these two is comparable, however renting is a more accessible way to overspend than owning.
As a result of this increased accessibility, rental property prices are higher than they should be, due to increased demand, and what actually happens is that people who rent tend to lose more, on average, than those who own, because they are more likely to overspend on rent, given their income and financial situation.
If prospective renters had to go through the same third party vetting processes as those who take out a mortgage - everything from an independent assessment of the value of the property, an inspection, third party vetting of your financial history -- you would also see a reduction in foolish renting choices and then renters would not, on average, experience greater losses than owners.
But right now they do.
Because they can claim that expense on their tax report and dynamically downsize or upsize if they are growing or shrinking fast?
You literally can not compare private homeownership with large companies owning their offices.
> When you buy a home you have to pay mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance costs, HOA dues, and you have the opportunity cost of not being able to invest your mortgage principal instead of locking it up in your house.
All negligible compare to the fact that you own actual property, you have the freedom to do what you please and the value of your home is one of the best assets against inflation, because housing is always needed.
If owning a home was not worth the trouble, how come gigantic corporations like blackrock are buying homes 30% over asking price as soon as they can?
Of course it‘s not true that only losers don‘t own their homes, but in the last 30 years, if you do own yours you‘ve automatically won. Housing prices are so astronomically high that suburbian property beats anything else.