There's a great writeup on this -- I may have even seen it here [1]. On average house prices tend to keep up with inflation and trail the market across the US. In specific markets that may not be true, then there's all your expenses. Ultimately, it depends on your personal situation if you should buy or rent, and the New York Times has a great calculator [2].

tl;dr: It's not always the smart choice to buy. Or to rent.

[1] https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-sho...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...