> owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline This is clearly impossible. I think every

> owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline This is clearly impossible. I think everyone can agree that a house is worth something. It's a roof over your head, so that's worth something nonzero. So if you own it, you own some value. Might be low, might be lower than what you paid initially, but it's worth something nonetheless. If you perpetually rent you own nothing, so your equity is always $0.