There's no question that buying is better because you always have a house to sell and will always make money - very few exceptions. You don't have to pay off your mortgage before you can sell, in fact lots of people don't want to pay off their mortgage quickly because of tax benefits.Houses are different because, as Biscan rightly said, houses valuations will only ever increase over a sustained period of time. However, unless you can pay that mortgage off quickly, who benefits from owning your own house? In the short term, renting would see you get something that is probably a bit bigger for a bit less pcm but in the longer term you'll have to continue paying rent for your entire life whereas hopefully you can eventually pay off a mortgage and be free of payments. The main benefit really are your offspring.

Ignoring the fact that you never had a pot with £15k in it allocated to the leccy.
Albeit, on a much cheaper car but I'm only currently paying £64pcm and that including clearing a £1,500 debt off whilst buying the car 