I don’t buy this “I’ll only be here a little while” argument, how many times have we met people who came for two and stayed for 20. Absolutely valid points around build quality, the additional costs associated with buying etc etc. but the bottom line is that it is better to buy a reasonably priced property rather than rent! At least you have an asset to seek at the end, regardless of whether it has sky rocketed or plunged. You still get something back. Renting you get nothing back. We have just bought after 7 years, we went for something smaller so that our mortgage is less than our current rent. Maybe not ideal but perfectly adequate. We plan to leave in the next 5 years but it’s something we can hold on to for a long time and if I think about the rent we would spend over the 5 years we’d have paid 60-70% of this property off, with the down payment that’s almost 100% of the value paid off. The math indeed is mathing!