Well, in general buying is way better than renting, no brainer here. But there are times when this relationship is turned on its head. One of those times happens to be right now (at least in SD).
Wall Street could have said in 2000 that stocks in general perform way better than cash. Strictly speaking, that would have been true as well.
PS: gotta love the observation that homeowners are worth 36 times as much as renters (which is probably true, I have no reason to doubt it). But I happen to know a thing or two about statistics, and I can offer an even better investment idea: people who own Rolex watches are worth on average 500 times as much as those who don’t. However, before you rush to your favorite watch dealer to do a 100% financing on a Rolex, you would do well to remember that correlation and causality are very different things…