One thing I do not understand in your response is why you didn't list equity building as one of the advantages of buying a home as opposed to renting.
Amortization is very limited, too.
That's the life of the average mortgage. In other words, virtually every dime of mortgage pay down will be absorbed in selling commissions if the house has not appreciated. The only way amortization works is if you buy a house and own it for a long time. In other words, in the first fifteen years of ownership, you've reduced the mortgage less than 25 percent. If you made a ten percent down payment, that means you've amortized about 1.4 percent of the original purchase price a year, on average.