(And the landlord can also just tell you to move, or change your rent.)

There are some places more renter-friendly than others, but even in very rural areas they usually have some sort of legislation on how quickly a landlord can raise your rent and under what circumstances they can boot you. Here in NYC we have it pretty good. I think it takes an act of god to get booted out of an apartment here, volcanic eruption, raining frogs...something like that.

The benefit of this over say, land taxes, is the government has no conflict of interest in helping the landlord over you, so you at least have a reasonably fair shot at fighting it.

Bear in mind I'm talking about home ownership as an investment, not as a "this is something I enjoy doing". If you are buying a house because you want to customize your space and walk on marble tiles or whatever, more the power to you. If you're doing it because its "the poor man's retirement plan", its not the best way to do that. This is particularly relevent in a day and age when people are having less children so the attractiveness of a 2 acre ranch with 8 bedrooms is less of an issue if you don't intend on dropping a litter of 7 children.