The maintenance costs are real, and the wealth data still leans hard toward owning. Roofs, HVAC, taxes, and insurance are costs renters don't carry directly, so we won't wave that away. But the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances has long shown homeowners with dramatically higher median net worth than renters, on the order of tens of times higher, with roughly half of that net worth sitting in home equity. The honest caveat: some of that gap is selection. Homeowners skew older, higher-earning, and more educated, so part of the difference is who becomes an owner in the first place. The part we'd argue is causal is behavioral. A mortgage is enforced savings. A 30-year fixed payment locks most of your housing cost in place while rents keep climbing, and every payment builds equity whether or not you have the discipline to invest on your own. In practice, most renters never save and invest the difference, so the spreadsheet comparison that assumes they do rarely survives real life. Outside coastal markets, expect more modest appreciation, and don't buy purely as an appreciation bet; nobody can promise a home rises in value. Buy a place to live that fixes your housing cost and forces savings over a long horizon. Over 10 to 30 years, that combination is what tends to leave owners ahead, maintenance and all. Run your specific numbers before deciding.