As both a landlord and renter, this is all great advice.
If anything, being to stay or move whenever I want is reason enough to purchase. When times are good they’ll raise the rent. When times are bad you’re on your own.
If someone won’t buy your home for the price you need to break even, you can’t move. That’s what happens in “the bad times.” Just when you might need some job mobility (like if you’re laid off) you’re stuck in your home that could take months to sell, and you’ll eat closing costs and fees. Or you have to eat a long commute, where a renter can just move within a year with essentially no financial hit.
I didn’t really point out overall economic outlooks for this very reason. If you can’t pay your bills whether you rent or buy you’re screwed either way.
Rents can go up but so can property taxes, especially when your home value increases due to a hot market. I don’t think price movement alone is a good reason to choose renting or buying. There are certainly exceptional markets but for most people it doesn’t play in.
As far as upgrading, it’s all about your tolerance. I’m not saying to install a $10,000 kitchen renovation in a rental. For some people it might be installing a paper towel holder or under-cabinet lighting. Maybe even replacing cheap boob light fixtures with a nicer fixture (and you can easily revert that when you leave and take your nice fixture with you).
There’s a huge rent friendly decorating trend going on often involving landlord friendly things like stick-on backsplashes and stick-on accent walls and murals. Paint of course is another one.
If you find the perfect apartment and the only thing wrong with it is that the stove is a 20 year old Hotpoint piece of trash a renter could even consider risking that $800 investment to get a new stove. Ultimately even if you completely lose the stove at the end of your lease that’s only $66 a month. If your nice stove saves you one restaurant trip a month it pays itself off.