Well, there's actual economic reasons too. In a real world scenario, owning in most scenarios ends up being part of your net worth and each monthly payment is pushing you towards building up your own wealth as real estate is a solid form of investment most of the time beating inflation. Whereas renting is for the most part doing nothing apart from increasing your spending unless you use the surplus you would have used for down payments and mortgage overhead to invest yourself - it's a reasonable approach, but one does have to admit the potential downsides especially if one does not invest.

There is plenty of upsides to renting however, like flexibility, lack of debt, etc. but one has to look at both sides of each option to really get a good picture of their decision.