It depends on your local housing market, but for example in The Netherlands, there is enough demand for houses, whether to rent or to buy, that when you rent yo

It depends on your local housing market, but for example in The Netherlands, there is enough demand for houses, whether to rent or to buy, that when you rent you do pay all of those taxes, maintenance, etc. It is just part of the rent. I have a hard time understanding a market where landlords cannot recover the cost of those taxes, etc. How you you make money if you can't do that? Then in The Netherlands, on average prices of houses go up. Fast enough even that for most people it is very hard to save enough money each year to even keep up with the housing prices. Then we get to the point that with a mortgage, part you pay is interest, that money is lost, just like rent. But in part you repay the mortgage. That stays in your pocket. So even if the cost of renting is the same as the mortgage plus taxes and other costs, then the mortgage is still cheaper. If you want to buy a house and you are currently renting then you are competing with people who see the value of their current house go up, and the part of the house that they own went up because they repaid part of the mortgage for some years. This makes it almost imposible to compete if you have been renting for a long time. Obviously, there can be local market where the demand for houses is low enough, that renting a house can be attractive.