<prompt> Human: I often see mentions in personal finance literature and general money advice that having a mortgage and owning a house is a bad financial move.Most of the time, this advice seems to be from US based people. Whilst Ive lived there in the past, I never owned a house there. In the UK, most areas outside of London, its actually cheaper to pay a mortgage than to rent. Now, I know there are a tonne of variables with these kind of situations. However, the general consensus advice mostly from American financial writers seems to be to avoid a mortgage and just rent a place.I dont want to engage in a big debate, as I know this is largely location specific, with a lot of the aforementioned variables. However, the way I see it, there are clear advantages to owning vs. renting.- Its cheaper to own. If you have the deposit downpayment, why rent? I know tonnes of people who have the income to buy, but just dont have that depositdownpayment. They are chomping at the bit to buy and cant!- You dont get kicked out of a house you have a mortgage on unless you dont pay the mortgage! With renting, youre always at the whim of a landlord who could choose to sell. I cant imagine being someone with a young family whos trapped in this situation of never knowing when theyll need to relocate. I know quite a few people in this situation.- Its an investment. In the UK, ever-increasing property prices in most areas mean that your investment is more secure and will pay in the long run for additions to the house, etc. The only potential negative I see come up again and again in the general consensus advice is that owning a house puts the onus on you to do all house repairs, etc. This presupposes that all landlords do repairs, if youre renting! Leaving aside the obvious issue that not all landlords are as caring as some financial writers assume, having the onus on you for house repairs isnt as bad a thing as some make out. Whats the most expensive thing that could go wrong in a house provided youre adequately insured? The boiler, Id wager. That might set you back 5000 about 6500 in USD at worst. Well, if you own a house, set aside an emergency fund and call it done. If you need to replace it, get decent coverage on it and you wont need to pay that 5000 for another 15 years or so.All this fear about something going drastically wrong in a house you own and thus you going homeless as a result is media fearmongering, IMO. And thats not even getting into the fact that, if youre renting and your boiler goes, you certainly wouldnt be the first person whos landlord waits a whole winter before they get it fixed!My strategy? I own a house. Pay a very small mortgage. Plan is to keep scaling up buying new houses and renting out the previous houses. So theyll be a string of houses that I own and earn passive income from with people paying my mortgages off for me ready to eventually sell for a lump sum.So if you need to live somewhere, why pay more and not even own the house? now, as an aside in relation to that point, I should probably add here that I am married with a secure financial situation. Im not at the whim of employers, etc. So the ever-real fear of the employee that their job might go at any moment! doesnt apply here.  <response>: Its not - its just situation specific. The people asking about whether they should buy a home arent making 150K a year and asking if they can afford a 250K home with a 50K down payment ready. They wouldnt need to. Nor would anyone here advise against it.Too many that do ask are gauging if they can afford PITI principal interest taxes insurance thats closer to half their take home pay, with little to no down payment, without an emergency fund, and with an already insane debt-to-income ratio due to student loansconsumer debt. Most of these people are simply not ready. 