I agree with your comment, you own because you want to be an owner and it comes with intangible benefits.  However, there are costs to ownership and you are paying for it with $500k of lower net worth.  Buying a home is just like any other investment, it comes down to whether the numbers make sense.  There are those who automatically conclude that buying is cheaper without analyzing the numbers but those are your typical unsophisticated and uneducated investors who will pay 3% MER for a money market fund (of course I'm exaggerating).  The reality is that renting and investing has beat buying by a significant margin over the past 5-7 years.  The numbers don't lie.  Period.