Approaching? I could already save about 1/3 of my monthly payments by getting a mortgage instead. The only issue is the deposit to get the mortgage, it's hard to save up enough money as it is.
https://www.thebalance.com/real-estate-vs-stocks-which-is-th...
That’s what causes market crashes.
Costs to own roof over your head are in reality: mortgage + running costs + depreciation + cost of capital
If you had an oracle that could predict with 99% certainty whether a given housebuyer would make a certain size of mortgage payments, you could afford to lend them that amount no matter the size of the down-payment, with a 1% risk premium over your interest rate.
We don't have such an oracle, so we look for other signs. One of the signs of financial stability is the ability to pay a large fraction of the price in advance.