Do people who passionate argue for buying a home instead of renting violate the Efficient Market Hypothesis? If that is so much better, why don't see a lot of people making money from landlording, by buying on mortgage and renting it out? Actually, I would think if you live somewhere where you see that, buying may be a good idea. If you personally rent from a landlord and you have a good idea that you and another family just paid for the landlords holiday cruise, you may want to stop that. But if you live somewhere where renting from co-ops, councils etc. is more frequent, and you see nobody profiting off landlording, and this suggests buying and re-renting is not really an option, you probably don't win much by buying.

Let's call it the Diamond Houses Fallacy. A Diamond House one that is indestructible and its value can only go up. Everything paid in mortgage for a Diamond House beyond the interest goes towards the equity, which is better than throwing it away in rent. However, real houses depreciate, need renovation, and you must also price in a certain risk of the neighborhood becoming lower value, kinda slum. If your country allows - for tax purposes - depreciating a house over 25 or 40 years, it may mean a 25 or 40 year mortgage would buy nothing, in the accounting sense: of course the house worths something, but you may have spent more on renovation.

But the real point here is that if you trust in efficient markets, you need not speculate on whether rent is spent on renovation or eaten up by depreciation. All you need to look around and see if people are making money with arbitraging it or not.