It's really difficult to make general statements about the wisdom of buying versus renting across an entire country with extremely diverse local real estate markets. We made an up-to-date heat map of US rent ratios here: http://hotpads.com/search/rent-ratio-heat-maps that demonstrates how some markets, even at the state level, are still tilted toward the buyer while others favor renters.
I think that it's not just an issue of region but also of price range. I am a life long renter and I've seen that rents tend to stay within a certain band - they only go so low or so high generally. So a small apartment might be still $1200 to rent vs. a mortgage of $1100 whereas for a high end home, rents might only get to say $5k or $6k vs. a mortgage of $12k on the same home. I rent a house for $4500 per month that would cost me a $7500 mortgage if I bought it.
Another issue is the fact that not everyone can buy a house that they're going to realistically want to live in for 30 years. Your family grows, you change cities due to job opportunities, etc.
So for the guy who knows he's going to be single and stay put, it may make sense for him to buy a $200k house instead of paying $1200 in rent for an apartment. But for many others, buying makes absolutely no sense.
