^

The government literally helps you make a good chunk of the payment. Mortgage interest & property taxes alone are a huge write off. Renting for anything more than a couple years is absolutely detrimental to wealth creation in most cases.

You can also write off various other improvements & upgrades as well, given their is no capital gains on a primary residence until after $250k or $500k if married that means all of the money & investment into the property grow tax free. This is huge.