Owning is nice. But it's more limited and more time consuming. There's a cost associated with that.
I'm not sure I agree that owning is limiting, it can be more time consuming if you don't want to hire people to do the work that the condo gives you "for free", but there are few limits.
In my last condo, a neighbor spent months trying to get approval to put a pre-fab sauna on her outdoor patio, she submitted the architectural review forms, made several changes so it would "fit into the character of the complex" even though it was on a back deck facing a natural area, no one would see it unless they walked in that 5 foot strip of land behind the complex. I'm not sure if it ever go approved, I moved out before she had final approval.
On the other hand, my wife and I decided on a whim a few months ago that we wanted to put in a hot tub in our new house’s back yard. We talked to a contractor, he came out and did a site survey, then put us on a wait list for a hot tub. A few weeks later, he had a returned unit (new owner didn't like the way it looked) that matched what we wanted, the next week he brought it out and installed it. The whole process took about a month from start to finish, and probably could have taken a week or two if demand wasn't so high.
How much aggravation was it? We own our house, so it was: Order it on Amazon, wait a couple days, then spend 90 minutes putting it together. The hardest part was finding one with fully enclosed springs that was in-stock.
He's jumped on it an average of at least 5 days a week, including sometimes in a light rain if he had excess energy to burn off. If we had a rented place or a shared yard or an HOA, who knows whether we'd have ever gotten it done?
Owning is a commitment. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that commitment; other than the fact there are costs associated with that. Those forgotten costs are often significant.
Though what you're calling a "limit" is really lack of stability -- you're free to pick up and move at any time when you live in an apartment, but your landlord is also (usually) free to ask you to leave at any time, so you can't count on having a long term stable place to live.
I was forced into leaving my last 2 apartments, one was was the owner wanted to stop renting and move back in to her place. The other was when the owner raised the rent by nearly 50% at the end of the lease term.
Now that I'm a homeowner, it's much less likely that I can be forced out of my home.
Arguably untouched junk in American households has better housing than most people in this world.
I'm living in SEA.the cost of owning a house isn't a lot where i live. so I'm surprised to keep hearing this from those living in US.
can you elaborate a bit more what kind of cost do have when owning a house?
Other costs of ownership are property tax (generally about 1% of the property value per year), gas/water/electricity are more expensive than renting because the house is bigger, there is home owners' insurance, and possibly neighborhood association fees. And then when you sell, you have capital gains tax and seller tends to pay the broker's fees for both the buy and seller, which totals up to about 6% of the selling price. There's probably sales tax, too.
we use concrete to build houses here so fixing roof is not needed.
AC and refrigerator rarely broke down.