No it wasn't. My point was that bearishbull might today be able to rent a property for a fraction of what it would cost to pay a mortgage on it, but that's due to two things....
1) house prices being hugely inflated
and
2) landlords subsidising the renter in the belief that capital appreciation will make up for it.
You've kinda sidetracked the discussion with your economics 101 comments, but my original point was that long-term renting could not be cheaper than buying over a long-term due to the fact that, except in a bubble of "irrational exhuberance", landlords have to turn a profit.
Either the rents go up in a big way (unlikely) or the prices come down, one way or the other, the current criteria for making renting more profitable than buying i.e. rent costs less than IO mortgage, can't be sustained for the lifetime of a mortgage.
Put another way for bearishbull - overall, would renting for the past 9-10 years have been cheaper than buying?