I've seen these critiques for years.

and while its not necessarily wrong, I believe it under weights a few points:

- Fixing your housing costs against inflation: You can't count on housing price increases, but you can count on inflation. If you buy a house and your mortgage payment is > rent. Overtime it will naturally flip. $1 no longer buys me a chocolate bar, and $800/month no longer gets me a 2 bed apartment.

- Leverage: I can't get a $700k loan to put into equities but I can for a home.

- Capital Battery: As I build equity in my home it can become an asset I take loans against to pursue other opportunities.

- Flexibility: Should I need to fiscally downsize I can still move out and rent out. Or rent a portion either via a suite or secondary unit

- Stability: No one can evict me into a hot rental market to suit their needs.

I wish more people talked about these points, selfishly so I didnt take so many of these articles at face value because in hindsight I wouldve bought earlier.

>- Fixing your housing costs against inflation:

Any sort of serious buy vs rent calculator already takes this into account, for instance the one on nytimes

>- Capital Battery: As I build equity in my home it can become an asset I take loans against to pursue other opportunities.

That feels absolutely insane to me, especially when you consider that by the time you built up significant amounts of equity you'll have significant commitments (eg. college age kids) and/or be close to retirement. Going 3x on S&P500 might be justified when you're a new grad, but not beyond your 30s.

>- Flexibility: Should I need to fiscally downsize I can still move out and rent out. Or rent a portion either via a suite or secondary unit

How is this more flexible than the counterfactual of renting?

> No one can evict me into a hot rental market to suit their needs.

The bank can, if you take out too many loans against your house that you can’t pay back. When you barrow against your house you’re increasing your risk.

“Rational people don’t risk what they have and need for what they don’t have and don’t need.” - Warren Buffett

My house is paid off now and I can’t think of anything that would make me barrow against it. Setting aside variable maintenance costs, with only having to worry about property taxes now, I could work at Costco and make ends meet now. That gives me some peace of mind against an uncertain job market. A loan against the house would change that equation wildly.

You're not taking into account that housing prices can fall, not just stay flat and there are always things to fix and deal with in a house that you own.

Renting it out is also not always gauranteed or easy if you are not nearby or don't want to deal with being a landlord, so imho that flexibility is not really there in many cases.

> If you buy a house and your mortgage payment is > rent. Overtime it will naturally flip.

This is so often missed by those who compare rent today vs. mortgage today. Of course the mortgage will be higher. Today.

Look into the future. Rent will only ever go up. Mortgage will only ever go down, both in absolute terms (due to opportunistic refinancing), and due to inflation, and proportionally due to your earnings increasing over your career. These three factors will erode a mortgage into nothing.

When I first bought my 3br house, my mortgage could've rented a 5br luxury house with a pool, so yes it was painful for a few years. A couple decades later now, my mortgage is about a fourth of the cost of renting a small studio apartment.

As you age, do you want to face ever-increasing housing costs, or decreasing costs?

> Capital Battery: As I build equity in my home it can become an asset I take loans against to pursue other opportunities.

Paying perpetual interest on a non-productive asset doesn't sound like a good idea, to me.

Yep, and in the US add the mortgage interest deduction, which is a regressive tax cut for people who can afford homes :-)

Also: Taxation and government subsidies.

Many countries tax systems give home owners preferential tax treatment for the primary home. I'll give an example from Australia:

The Australian age pension is means tested - there's a test of both income and assets. If your income and/or assets are too high, you get no age pension. But homeowners benefit from special treatment: A retired couple who own a home are eligible for the full aged pension if their assets excluding the value of their home are worth at most AUD 481.5k. A retired couple who are not homeowners are eligible for the full aged pension if their assets are worth at most AUD 749.5k.

For the purposes of getting a public funded aged pension or not, the value of the home is deemed to be about AUD 270k regardless of its actual market value -- contrast that with the median price of a home in Sydney being about AUD 1.6m!

Back of the envelope comparison:

Retired couple with paid off house worth $1.6m in Sydney, budget of $5k / yr for council rates and insurance + $16k/yr (1% of $1.6m median home value, say) as budget for home maintenance. Suppose our couple also have $481.5k in financial assets outside of the home generating a 4% real return, the max amount they can have as homeowners for the full age pension. Gross income from financial assets and full aged pension is $60,470. Housing costs are 35% of gross income, leaving 65% of gross income -- $39,470 to pay non housing living expenses.

Compare with a retired couple in Sydney who have the same net worth -- $2081.5k -- except all in financial assets, not home owners. Suppose they rent a 2 bed apartment in Sydney at $900 / week. They are not eligible for any age pension as their non-home financial assets exceed the means-tested assets cap of $1.37m for a part pension for a couple who don't own a home. Their gross income from financial assets, assuming a 4% real return, is $83.26k. Their housing costs from renting are $46.8k / yr, leaving them with $36,460 to pay non housing living expenses.

So, of the two couples with identical net worths, the couple with most of their wealth concentrated in the $1.6m sydney house has about 8% extra cash to spend on non housing living expenses, and gets to enjoy the benefit of living in a house vs a 2 bed apartment, and also enjoys the additional stability in their retirement years with no way a landlord can suddenly force them to move.

The calculation above ignores income tax. But - if we assume both couples have their financial assets parked in tax advantaged retirement accounts (Australia's superannuation system), then their retirement income streams from these financial assets is tax free, and although the age pension is taxable income, the couple receiving the age pension wouldn't expect to pay any income tax, due to the tiered progressive tax rates and additional tax offsets for seniors and pensioners.

> Leverage: I can't get a $700k loan to put into equities but I can for a home.

Exactly, and most people wouldn't even be able to get half of that for investing in a business that turns a profit and employs local people. So that's why all money is rushing into real estate and the industrial world is dying now. And death is forever.