The high cost of housing in major cities like San Francisco and New York has made homeownership a distant dream for millennials, who are increasingly stuck renting indefinitely. While some argue that buying is always the smarter financial move, the math doesn't hold up when a median home price is 12 times the median income. I've seen friends sink their savings into down payments only to face massive repair bills, while others invest their money in stocks and rent modest apartments, which seems to be working fine for them. Is owning a home really still the best way to build wealth, or have we been brainwashed by our parents' generation?