You're missing the part where not everyone can pay for the down payment or qualify for a mortgage (or buy the house outright, for that matter). Even if you can,

You're missing the part where not everyone can pay for the down payment or qualify for a mortgage (or buy the house outright, for that matter). Even if you can, it's a nail-biting month or so of crap just to go through the process. And even THEN, you're basically forced to stay in one place for the foreseeable future, or you risk losing a lot of money, and going through a ton of stress all over again. This creates an economic inequality that tilts in favor of the people who are able and willing to buy a house. I mean, you can sit there all day and say "well, it doesn't make sense that people would buy instead of rent if it were economically disadvantageous, so the market must be relatively balanced." But that's simply not the case. You can look at actual numbers to show you this.