Ralph Mowery wrote
Rod Speed wrote

My town has by far the biggest chicken and turkey operation
in the entire southern hemisphere, that the reason for the
extreme shortage of rental accommodation. It will be interesting
to see how long that lasts, we are building an immense number
of new houses. He works there, driving a forklift in the cold store,
right thru the night and is just now having his first owned house built.

Here its actually cheaper to buy than
to rent now, even with a big new house.

In one sense it was less expensive on the payments to buy than
rent where I lived. There were about 10 houses built at the same
time and very similar at the time they were all around 40 years old.
I was trying to sell the house I lived in and at the same time a few
houses away soneone was renting out their house. The monthly
payments on a 30 year load plus the escrow for tax and insurance on
my house would have been a few dollars less. However you do have
to factor in that if you buy the house you have to put on a new roof

Not here, we don't replaces roofs at all anymore.

new heat pump and a few other things over the years. Then the wife
is always wanting new floor covering and painting. One good thing
about owning the house is that you may get your money back.

We do that in spades, every time.

I paid about $ 25 thousand for the house, had about $ 75 thousand
in payments to the loan company. Sold it for $90,000

In our capital citys, $1M for wrecks is very common.
They are buying the land, not the house.

so would have made about $ 15,000
but taxes ate up most of that

Not here. And the renters pay the tax indirectly anyway.

and repairs and such ate up the rest.

No significant repairs here. They are almost entirely brick now.

However it gave me the effect of living
in it for about 40 years free and I could
apply that $ 90 K to another house.