In the short term, renting isn't always stupid if you can own, but most of the time it is. In the long term, renting is, with very rare exceptions, much worse than buying. For context, even those who bought in 2005 at the peak of the last housing bubble on a fixed 30y are saving a fuckton by owning rather than renting. They would be paying 3-4x more renting than owning today.