When I imagine myself waking up in the body of a 29 year old renter instead of a 40+ y/o serial homeowner, my first question related to living arrangements - which would come long after a series of other questions in that scenario - would be "where do I want to live?"
This question, in turn, relates to where my highest-earning work is available. For most people this is a wash, but some specialties like hedge fund manager, federal bureaucrat, oil field worker, or rocket scientist are geographically constrained . It also relates to the difference in renting vs. owning in various places, the cost of living vs. salary in various places, and my likelihood for needing to stay geographically mobile in my particular career. Presumably, since I just woke up in someone else's body, the locations of family and friends are of minimal importance to me and I'm OK with permanently losing touch with everyone.
So I would make a long list of metro areas where my specialty is in good demand if that matters, use salary.com to find the salaries in those areas, and then use an online cost-of-living comparison tool like
https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator to determine which areas are the best deals in terms of low cost / good salary. I would not end up somewhere with expenses so high that saving 50-75% of my income was off the table. Presumably, I'd still be me, so getting rich and retiring young would still be priorities.
It's likely I would end up with something like Memphis, Cleveland, Rochester, or Kansas City (guess who's done the exercise already) or maybe one of the hundreds of smaller cities with an even lower COL. If I got a job lined up and decided to move to one of those places, I'd grab myself one of their $150k houses, finance it for 15 years at 2.6%, and get to work building a local social life. If housing prices crash, it would be a paper loss for me, and unless the Great Depression reoccurs, my payments would remain lower than rent on a 1BR apartment. If I got extra money-hungry I'd have an extra bedroom for a roommate.
If, however, I decided to chase the big money in New York City, Seattle, California, or other places where bedrooms cost a quarter-million apiece, I would say "hail no!" and rent something small and dumpy forever. I'd capitalize on my mobility and snipe for promotions in other cities every other year. I'd spend a lot more time hustling and a lot less time mowing grass, wandering Home Depot, shopping for furniture, or installing faucets.
Either path leads to FIRE, but the second is riskier. If I don't get that promo, it's more time spent chugging along under the weight of high costs. If I do, however, I zip into six-figure land and soon become one of those case studies that always riles people up on this forum: "can I retire with only $3.5M?". Additionally, if I grow roots in a HCOL area, the costs may grow faster than I can grow my portfolio, and so it's OMY forever.
Here's the funny thing about "hip" cities. ALL cities have funky bars, concerts, activities, and interesting cultural aspects. Some just cost 5X as much as others and have bigger crowds. The people who pay 5X as much are convinced they are getting their money's worth, because imagine if things were 5X worse, so they are glad not to be in places that haven't yet caught the media's attention for being "hip". Also, at age 29, you won't be even halfway through a 15 year mortgage before your priorities change from doing the things people in their 20's do to doing other things. You
probably hopefully won't be the 40 year old singing at the piano bar or dancing at the nightclub. But if you live in a popular place, you still have to pay for it! Something to keep in mind.