Year by year the details vary but over a long enough period of time the years you save and years you spend average out. Similarly speaking, for every guy that becomes an overnight millionaire from a weird real estate market boom there's a few thousand who foreclose on their variable rate mortgage. You'll notice that NYC has great rent laws, but also the 2nd highest rent in the country. So its 6 of one, half a dozen of the other - sure you have tons of rights to not get thrown out but on average you pay 2x as much to live somewhere.

Its a complicated thing and because its complicated you can only compare different situations by looking at averages that are so watered down that they are really oversimplified.

The bottom line is that if you want to have a high net worth, don't take out loans - in essence you're just filtering your income by giving a chunk of it to a bank. But obviously real life isn't quite so simple, otherwise no one would buy houses.