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One of the flaws in any analysis like this is that a comparison between owning vs. renting is usually presented over the course of many years. That's because it only works in favor of a homeowner over a long period of time, and only with the benefit of hindsight when you have already lived there for 20+ years.

One big difference between owning a home and renting a home is that you are always buying at the current market rate for buying the property, while the cash flow for a landlord is based on the value of the property when he purchased it. If you buy a home today, you might pay $450,000 for it. But if you rent the same home from a landlord who paid $200,000 for it 20+ years ago, the landlord can make a lot of money even by charging a monthly rent that is much lower than a mortgage payment on the same property.

To reinforce this point, just do some home shopping in a nice neighborhood near your home. Calculate the monthly cost of buying a home, then see what it would cost to rent the same home in the same neighborhood. I can guarantee you that the monthly rent is far lower than the monthly cost of owning the home.

That definitely depends on your location, your credit history and down payment. A $130k purchase in Ft Worth TX with 20% down and about a 4.5% rate costs about $980/mo (PITI) and rents for $1350. Nice margin and room for decrease if necessary but in the meantime, that extra can go to improvements or paying down the principal in a hurry.

I can tell you that my brother who has about 20 properties and my wife's cousing who owns over 300 and anyone else I know of who owns and rents properties, regardless of when they bought them, regardless of the amounts they owe (cousin with over 300 paid cash for most and owns all outright) always charge renters market rates. My examples were to highlight that a landlord has the same costs that a homeowner has and needs to turn a profit. Monthly rents in my neighborhood for a 3 BR 2 BA 2 car garage with a pool are very close to the mortgage rates for the same.

If a landlord owns a property that they bought 20 years ago for 200,000 and now prevailing prices in the same neighborhood are $450,000, the landlord will either sell the house for that price and pocket the difference or rent for prevailing rates or he is a fool. And it is just as likely that landlords have a mix of properties that they've bought at various times for market rates so they aren't all sitting on 20 year old properties raking in the money.

Now you can't account for the interference in the market by the government or by government policies. When I bought in 2010 the house was close to the bottom of the housing bubble that had burst. Just after I bought it for cash from the proceeds from a house I sold for cash the market went a bit lower then began a rebound. From the prices in my market I believe we are starting another bubble. BUT that doesn't mean that landlords won't charge prevailing market rates too (and I don't blame them).