In some places, it's also much cheaper to rent that own after factoring all this in.
However, many jurisdiction give tax advantage to owner occupied property.
Eg you have to pay all kinds of taxes on the return from a million dollars in the stock market, compared to the housing services you consume from your own million dollar house.
(That's in most countries. In eg Singapore we don't have capital gains tax. So it's a bit more even.)
Joking aside, Midwest tends to be cheaper. Chicagoland area is far cheaper than SF or NYC and yet has a lot of good paying jobs.
Toronto is one, you could rent a condo worth 600-700k for 2k a month when the mortgage alone before local taxes etc would be over 3k.