As everyone's saying it totally depends on the market.
Here's an example from my real life: I love my neighborhood and would love to stay long-term, and I don't love being in a month-to-month lease. But our rent is $1500 a month (for half a duplex), while condos in other houses on my street (which are admittedly on average nicer than my place, at least the ones I've seen) have recently sold for $500-700K. Their property taxes + condo fees add up to half or more of our rent, so they're "throwing away" at least half as much as we are, before we even start looking at transaction costs and mortgage interest and ROI on a down payment.
End result for us is that we'll stay where we are until the landlords kick us out! Buying a house in my (lovely) neighborhood would feel like a huge waste of money to me.
When we buy, it will probably not be anywhere near where we are now, which is too bad.