Absolutely true if you're renting a home, but I feel like people never address that most people are renting apartments. These have substantially lower operating costs.

Home buying/rental is a totally fair comparison, but I know several people whose main justification for buying a home, rather than continuing living in an apartment, was that they wanted to, "stop throwing their money away". Totally ignoring how home ownership is actually more costly than renting a suitable apartment.

Of course, I fully recognize their are a lot of advantages to home ownership. Some of which you already called out. However, I doubt those advantages are actually sufficient to justify a small, but significant, portion of home purchases.