After years of living in a pretty nice, but by no means luxurious, apartment (it was a pretty large one-bedroom, significantly below-market rent because it was owned by a "mom and pop" owner just trying to cover his costs, and a mile walk from my work, but small kitchen, dated appliances, no outdoor space of my own, no parking unless I paid $250 per month for a place a block away, etc).
I finally "caved" last year and bought a very, very nice townhouse (gorgeous kitchen, second bedroom that we may need in the imminent future, available parking, patio and deck, etc.). It cost me materially over $600k after factoring in renovations and the like, and I doubled my commute to work (which is a little harder to walk when the weather gets particularly hot or cold, though I still manage to walk most days, and my commute is still shorter than the commute people have from the suburbs--but not by much).
It wasn't an impulse buy, in that I had been saving money for a downpayment for years. But it definitely was a massive lifestyle upgrade, and it will cost me a massive amount more than my old rent over time. About $2100 per month more, in fact, after tax-effecting property taxes (which are more than half of what my rent used to be on their own--once you factor in HOA fees, my recurring monthly "rent" is not quite $1,000 a month) and mortgage interest and factoring in my significantly higher utility bills and modest annual home maintenance costs of 1.5%. If I treat the principal payments on the mortgage as investment rather than expense, then it's still about $1100 per month more. I probably could have rented a similar place for $600-700 more than my old rent, so I'm definitely paying an ownership premium, and besides, I never would have upgraded my living situation to this extent if I wasn't buying (though I may have been forced into a 2-bedroom relatively soon). And this all ignores the fact that I lost out on an amount of gains in the market on my down-payment that honestly makes me a little ill when I stop to think about it.
I don't regret the decision at all. But there is no question whatsoever that from a strictly economic perspective, buying a house was a "mistake"--and a very large one, at that. Article doesn't understand correlation vs. causation.