Discussions about "rent vs buy", and the corollary of "mortgage vs cash", rarely address the problem of
you MUST make that payment every month. Pay up or lose it.
The notion of paying every month, pretty much for life, is deeply ingrained in society to the point of not renting/mortgaging seems downright weird. (It's kinda like the recurring threads where living on $1/meal is met with outrage by most, despite many doing so with great satisfaction.) Few start out with a primary goal being owning home & property outright ASAP. This normalizes the dependency factor, reinforcing a social dynamic where people can't take long vacations or high risks, and live in fear of financial devastation from sudden unemployment or disability, precisely because that massive monthly payment ever looms.
The normalization of rent/mortgage also means social expectation of costlier dwellings. Where our culture(s) were satisfied by much humbler abodes a few decades ago, we've now grown to expect vast variants on the McMansion theme as a minimum - shocked at any suggestion that buying a brick shoebox (which our [grand]parents were content with) outright might be financially sensible. I expect downvotes based on "you can't expect anyone to live in that! cash purchase of real estate is absurd unless you're rich!" Well yeah, if you insist on buying multi-thousand-square-foot floorspace in quasi-urban settings with lots of options, sure it's gonna cost ... but you can choose to live somewhere less expensive, in a smaller space, and own outright much sooner - giving you the freedom to take a sabbatical, or risk investments, or not worry about layoffs.
In retrospect, and stuck with a large mortgage (bought at the peak), I strongly suggest anyone entering the housing market focus on hoarding cash until they can buy something, anything, outright. The freedom full ownership bestows is remarkable. Pity society sneers at it.