[whywhywhywhy]

You also never see any of that money ever again, with a mortgage a % of the money spent a money gets converted into the best asset for retaining wealth there is.

Worst possible situation you can get in with a house: not being able to just walk away, difficulty to sell if the area has gone bad, even with all these the worst thing you can do is just walk away from the house and even then you're just back to the same position you'd be in if you had rented, you'd have nothing.