I would consider, to the extent possible, the intangibles as well; specifically, the landlord-tenant relationship. We currently rent a house, but I would rather own (even if overall costs were a little higher). Main reason is our landlord situation. They are far from being "landlords from hell" (I can imagine a lot worse), but there are lot of little things that annoy us.
Lesson learned, for me anyway, is: if you are planning on renting, you should scrutinize the landlord the same way they would scrutinize you as a tenant. In particular, how much experience do they have? Do they manage other properties? Where do they draw the line on what they fix and what you are responsible for? How timely will they be with various fixes and repairs? What is their long-term plan for the property? Why are they renting the house?
In our case, there are issues with timeliness of repairs. For example, a broken window took over a week to get fixed. A broken furnace took nearly a day just to get a response from the landlords. Also, because of circumstances, the owners of the house are effectively "accidental" landlords, and we're never certain what their long-term plans for the house are. They wanted a four month showing period prior to the end of our lease.
We're not planning on staying in the house for the long-haul, so these things are more frustrating annoyances than anything. But if we planned on living here for a long time, we'd insist on some harder and better-defined requirements for the kind of service we get.
Sidenote: a general tip for moving into any new place: look for any evidence that a previous occupant had pets that were sick or not house-broken. In our case, when we viewed the house, the owners had the furnace fan running non-stop. We moved in in winter, and it wasn't until the weather got warm that I realized the furnace fan was always on. When I turned it off, I could smell cat urine. Fortunately, it was confined to one area, so we paid to have that professionally cleaned (after numerous self-cleaning attempts failed to remove the odor). In the future, I don't care how crazy I look, before I buy or rent another place, I'm going through it with a blacklight, and even getting down on my hands an knees and literally sniffing for problems.