The New York Times has a fairly detailed rent-vs-buy calculator that makes it easy to see the effects of changing some of the variables the author talks about in the article.
This is sadly a bit outdated - the 2018 tax code changes significantly hit the owning case in certain markets and the NYT calculator may view owning as ~10% better than it should be for high-income married individuals.
Yeah, running that tool produces exactly the opposite conclusion from the article. Renting is easily 50% higher than the break-even price provided.
An interesting experiment: go back and use the article's numbers for "what does the future hold?" That is, 2% home price growth, 2% rent growth, 8% investment returns. For me, those numbers say I could rent for $5,000 and come out ahead. Using the recent-history numbers for where I live, the price craters to $1,500.
I know the article says "circumstances may vary" a dozen times, but I think it's still pretty misleading, especially the P/R section. High and rising housing prices go hand in hand with large rent increases, and rent growth dominates pretty much everything else in this calculation.
I live outside of DC now and it's very expensive. Rent is constantly being pushed up and up, no matter how good of a tenant you are. I'm hoping to buy again later this year to lock in a stable monthly payment.
shameless plug for my own: https://medium.com/@usaar33/an-up-to-date-buy-or-rent-calcul...