What’s this fixation on house ownership? It doesn’t make sense rationally. Stock markets always perform better, easily beating ownership and the hassle and associated risks of managing property.

Because you can build things like the house we're commenting on. If that's not your thing that's totally fine, but sometimes people want to spend way their hard earned money on adapting their living situation to suit their desires.

If I'm going to sink that kind of time/money/effort into building a thing, I don't want a landlord to be able to come in and take it away from me with some legal loophole or by raising my rent.

One factor: It's an investment that you can get for 20% down, or less. You can't borrow that much to gamble in the stock market. All is well as long as the value of the house doesn't go down.

People like the idea of making money. They are used to real estate always increasing in value.

We'll see what happens as boomer demand ages out.

And the loan is heavily subsidized by the federal government (and frequently by other governments as well).

US policy is to make real estate a fundamental part of Americans wealth. It’s worked! Since the policy started we’ve gone from hovering in the 40% homeownership rate to hovering in the mid 60s.

It’s also made housing expensive and homogeneous.

Even with subsidies taken into account, the ROI is still higher with stocks and the risks a lot higher with properties. 401k is also subsidized. See studies.

I understand that there may be arguments individually for the decision and emotional safety is one, but it should be based on fact, not myth and misunderstanding.

Even you don't care about owning, just the idea that you can afford 10x space for less money than a crappy studio in a HCOL area.

Some people value other things than homeownership.

Some people value living in their area (regardless of what it costs) for reasons that make moving undesirable.

Well this person is complaining about not being a homeowner so...