At any rate, owning a place also carries a lot in maintenance - at least where I live, owning a properly in a residential area costs a lot more than renting mostly due to taxes and maintenance.
In the short term yes, in the long term that doesn't add up. If it were cheaper to rent than own, nobody would be a landlord.
Your commentary is sensible and, historically speaking, property ownership tends to have an ever increasing but very long term significant return on investment.
However, such skewed economy that turns property into pure investments (flippers, empty houses, etc.) increases the risk of such long term financial commitment and makes people pause before hedging their savings on this - mortgage and taxes can be an unsustainable part of the income of young people and families, not to mention gentrification (the subject du jour). This is specially true after entire families have been burned by the 2008 crisis, where financially independent younger generations are moving this down on their list priorities (a while ago I read this in a few references around). Another thing that contributes to this is the immense college debt.
With a heated economy, the allure of the financial market flips the equation towards having the down payment money invested in finance products and recovering their rental expenses through it - in other words, you build your equity not in a house but in cashflow. In the long run it tends to pay off or at least get close enough, but obviously this always depends on your own financial skills or advice.
As anecdotal evidence, twelve years ago a very financially savvy friend used to have three properties for rental in two states and was considering adding a one more to his portfolio. Fast forward to today, all his money is on the finance market. Another friend living in California went upside down on his house and ten years later he has yet to recover from that loss.
In another country and era (2002), I paid for my apartment in full with my savings and lived on it for a few years. Economy tanked, my job moved to another the country and I got almost no return in selling it (strenuous consequences, but still a fact of life). My parents have about four properties (apart from their own) and the return is about 0.5~1% a year when comparing to the total value of the properties - that on a country with an economy that pays 6~7%/yr interest in a conservative investment.
To me this is quite similar to the folks that challenge the cost of higher education: with the amount of money saved, one could potentially invest it now and gain in the long run, but that takes discipline and skills. Not everybody will be successful.
All that said, I still own a house and bleed every year we make a comparison with rental - financially it is a disaster, but there are many other practical/psychological factors involved, especially when you have kids.