You also have government guaranteed mortgages. This is probably the most unusual aspect of the American home market in comparison to other markets...it is essentially publicly owned (the only place that has a similar structure is Denmark, and even then there is no Freddie Mac/Fannie Mac...just a large secondary market for resi mortgages) and makes mortgages very cheap with little rate risk (I am in UK, 30yr fixed mortgages are unheard of, the most you can get is 5yr fixed and it costs 200bps more than a 30yr fixed in the US).
Just a broader comment: the main financial argument against home ownership is really the size of the deposit. If you are paying 25% down (this is now standard where I am in the UK, we went from 120% mortgages to 75% mortgages in the last ten years...and house prices kept rising, so the upfront cost of housing is way way way up) then it may be close for some people. But you add in the security, the potential for capital growth...it is attractive financially (and I wouldn't say this is true in the UK, downpayments are too high, mortgage rates are too expensive and come with massive interest rate risk...it isn't worth it on a pure financial basis).
I can't see myself every buying a house because I just don't like having a lot of stuff, it tends to worry/distract me. But I think it is unfortunate that housing has become associated with this "I got mine" mentality. Germany is a nation of renters, it has led to levels of wealth inequality higher than the US because all that value from rising property prices has gone into the pockets of a few large corporations (the median net financial wealth of a German citizen is EUR20k, about the same as Greece...and they have one of the highest per capita rates of billionaires). Maybe we can tax rising property values more efficiently but the US model (essentially, publicly guaranteed mortgages) works quite well too.
- up to $500,000 in tax-free capital gains for couples
- cheap leverage via low interest rates courtesy of the Fed and further subsidized by renters via mortgage interest deduction
- SALT deduction (albeit reduced as of 2017)