[nknighthb]

You're thinking about this as purely a financial investment, but that's not all it is. It's a solution to another problem entirely: One way or another, you must have shelter.

By paying for it with a mortgage, you get shelter and a valuable asset at a set cost, and, once the mortgage is paid off, that cost drops to taxes, maintenance, and insurance.

Paying rent, you get only temporary shelter, for which you must pay whatever the market price is, forever. Your rent is unlikely to fall, can rise dramatically, and you don't come out the other end with an asset, that money is just gone. You didn't put it in a diverse portfolio.