Say you put away 1% of the value in depreciation + 3% as cost of capital + 1% in running costs a year. That's around 5% of the homes value in costs that you're having every year, so you need a return on that just to break even.
If you're looking to live somewhere, and you can choose to buy or rent the exact same house, it's simple to do the math. If your yearly rent is 12k, then just divide that by the 5% required return and you get the value of that house.
So 12k/0.05 = 240K
If that house costs more than 240K to buy, you're better off just renting it and saving the difference.
For me the difference in the apartment I'm renting and the price is ridiculous. The landlord is taking about 1.5% of the house value from me yearly, and using that to pay all those costs, so they are losing about 3.5% per year by renting it to me.
Thank you Mr. Landlord