Conventional wisdom is just that - conventional, and an important thing to teach people is that there are times when convention should be broken.
Back during the height of housing bubble (2006/2007), a friend of mine decided to buy his first home. It was so obviously a "bubble buy" that even before things started to get bad, it was visible from a mile away that he was making a bad decision: He was buying a new construction K. Hov. cookie-cutter apartment in Edgewater, NJ, which was just close enough to Manhattan to tempt those "I'm buying a NYC apartment!" types but just far enough away that there wasn't a real fundamental demand to live there. He got a terrible no-verification mortgage ("liar loan") that we all warned him was trouble. He paid way too much -- something like $600k for a 1BR condo (near Manhattan prices, not Edgewater NJ prices).
When our friends warned him of these issues, when we pointed out that he could rent a very nice 2BR apartment a few blocks away for $2500/month that he and his wife would be plenty comfortable in, when we pointed out he was likely buying at or near the peak of a heady real estate market, he didn't care. His only refrain - over and over - was the age-old:
"But I'm going to be a _homeowner_. You guys are just throwing away money towards rent every month. I don't want to do that."
Fast forward a few years: Not surprisingly, his interest rate reset, his apartment is worth about $400k, and he had to go through mortgage default to get a modification on his loan.
And yet he still clings to his decision - "yeah but I own my place, and it'll even out over the next few years."
Sometimes buying for the sake of buying just isn't the right decision, despite what "we were all taught."