[dougmoscrop]

I live in Canada, things don't quite work like the US in terms of ownership incentives, but generally nobody is renting a house here for less than what it costs to finance and maintain it, so rather than "renting with extra step", an entire generation of people are being told they can not afford to own the home, but they can go ahead and pay the bills of the person who does.

Buying a house ten years ago has added about $450,000 to my net worth, without me making any extra payments. Had we stayed renting an apartment, saving the difference would have produced about $57,000 at 8% annualized, and had we rented a house that was comparable, would have yielded nothing.

Buying a house here can be highly leveraged - you start off only having to pay 5, 10, 20 percent of the price, but until very recently houses appreciated more than the interest on the mortgage, furthermore, as you pay your mortgage off, you can take a loan out against a certain portion of the value of the house and use that money to invest in other things, while tax deducting the interest from that loan. Never actually paying your house off is a thing for both the rich and the poor, but with very different outcomes.