Again, the world is not black and white, only.

You know what you’re left with after renting for 50 years? Absolutely nothing.

Not really. If I don’t buy any real estate, I can afford to invest into other things. I could make monthly investments into a MSCI world ETF, for example. After a couple of decades I will have 0 debts and a lot of funds. And selling funds is easy and can be handled very flexibly (selling funds for amount x is trivial). If I buy real estate, by the time I retire I will have a house, worth 400.000€ or so and 200.000€ of debt or something along those lines. That might be better on balance, but it is a pain in the ass. You safe money on rent, but you pay interest instead.

And it’s not even like tenant rights are especially good here.

In Germany they are relatively good for tenants. Can’t complain. Rental contracts are typically indefinite. The landlord can also not raise my rent at will or get me out without a good reason and a very generous grace period. But on the other hand, I got a new gf and might need more space and some garden, etc. We will see. I have some considerations to do.