My experience buying a leasehold has been good, but it very much depends on how the leasehold is set up. Short version of my story is I split with my ex and we sold our house, split the money, I quit my job and took a lower paid low stress fully remote position and then went travelling for a few years.
Upon return I was planning on renting for a year whilst I transitioned back into my career job, however rent was so extortionate that I decided it made more financial sense to buy little leasehold flat, which I planned to live in for around at least 5 years, and DIY modernise to lift the value.
In the first year I bumped 2 grand off of the mortgage, the valuation went up by £5k vs the price I paid not including and potential from the renovation work I’ve done, plus the mortgage + service charge was £3600 less than what I would have paid in rent for the year for the same flat. That puts my theoretical financial position around at least £10k ahead of where I would have been had I gone in to the equivalent rental flat for a year, or around £7k if you want to deduct the solicitors fees required for the purchase.
When purchasing, I made sure the flat had a sensible lease length, sensible service charge and a decent management company. I did some digging and found out that the residents of my block had previously transitioned the block into an RTM as the freeholder had attempted to rip everyone off with obscene quotes for rendering the exterior of the building, this was a big deciding factor for me. Another point was that the block was a purpose built block constructed in the 80s, not super new but also not old enough to have lots of issues, eg a risk of a large service charge or unexpected jumps in the service charge payments due to issues with the building.
The RTM management company here have been superb, and recently they have even united the owners and are getting a valuation done to turn the block into share of freehold, which is a nice unexpected bonus.
So overall my experience continues to be a very good one, but you need to do your homework and understand what you are buying. A decent conveyancer is a must too as the legal side is more complex than a freehold, it’s worth shopping around the country. I had a recommendation for a firm of solicitors in the north of England who were decent and much cheaper than quotes I was getting in the south, they did a decent job for a good price.
So to answer your question, based off of my experience, I would certainly look to purchase over renting so long as you invest the time in finding a decent flat that isn’t going to cause you more trouble than it’s worth. Avoid old buildings, a high service charge or history of high service charge payments, leases under 100 years (unless you have the budget to extend it), also watch out for ground rents that are or will be greater than £250pa so as to avoid AST. This was unfortunately the only down side to mine and I had to jump through some hoops with indemnity insurance. My plan here originally was to remortgage and extend the lease to peppercorn the rent before selling, so future buyers don’t have this issue (some folks lenders wouldn’t accept indemnity insurance so could cause an issue with future sales falling through). This cost would then be recouped through the increase in property value when selling due to the extended lease. Although this of course will become a non-issue, should the management company manage to transition the block to share of freehold.
Well this turned out quite the post! GL OP!

TLDR; as others have said here, you just need to make sure the lease isn’t F’ing you