Is it though? Seems like the same talking points people bring up when trying to argue that renting isn't that bad. And it's only getting worse as the housing and cost of living crises make people desperate.

The stuff about the up-front cost of getting a mortgage is more indicative of a broken system rather than an argument against home ownership. If anything it highlights how fucked up it is that you need a certain amount of money to be deemed worthy of having a place to live that you can't be kicked out of on a whim.

The argument about maintenance is somewhat valid, but only if you are assuming that landlords act promptly when it comes to maintenance in rentals.

And the entire article is based on a false premise, because renting is "dead money" in the sense that you are paying someone else's mortgage for the right to have a roof over your head. There's no arguing around that. Yes, home ownership is expensive. But are we really going to pretend that the current rental situation isn't completely fucked? Maybe this article would have made sense a couple decades ago, when a few years in a share house meant you could save enough to break into home ownership. I don't think that's the reality anymore though.