I don't care how it will do as an investment, I don't like paying thousands of dollars a month to somebody else in the form of rent.
You can't really take the investment aspect or any of these others out of the analysis if you want to understand what's best for you. Particularly in countries with policies to encourage/subsidize home ownership the answer is often, "buy a place", but not always.
No tax benefits go to renters. That's one of many considerations here other than raw liabilities.
Agree a investment property is a whole other can of worms, but not really relevant on the "should I buy or rent, personally" decision. For that one, you need to compare to other investments, which is in many ways more straightforward.