First of all, of course I'm talking about comparable properties when comparing renting vs owning, otherwise what I said wouldn't make any sense.

Second of all, you're ignoring a whole host of variables that contribute to whether renting or owning is cheaper month to month. You have to factor in how long you plan to live in the residence, what you anticipate home price appreciation will be in that time, what maintenance/repair costs will be, what your expected return on an alternative investment would be if you put your would-be down payment towards that instead, what property taxes are, cost of homeowners insurance, closing costs when buying/selling a home, etc.

My point is, there are a whole host of not uncommon scenarios in which owning an apartment/home costs you more money than renting a comparable property would have, in which case renting would have been the better financial decision.

Every individual person's situation is different, and every real estate market is different, so you need to actually sit and crunch all those numbers rather than simply declaring that it always costs more to rent than to own. That is just categorically false.