That would only be a true analogy if I rented a car for 10+ years. At that point, it would likely make more sense to buy. In fact, it often makes more sense to buy corporate real estate as well, however because these commercial landlords already own it and refuse to sell (or only will sell at a price far beyond the actual legitimate value of the property), businesses must either /build/ new real estate or lease, and building is far more expensive than buying due to the regulatory capture of zoning and permitting. It's a mere coincidence that major commercial landlords are good buddies with everyone at the zoning and planning office in $metro.

If you want to be honest, the service commercial landlords provide is managing zoning/permitting with the city by proxy, which is mostly a corrupt institution, so it's corruption management by proxy.