Interesting and well written as always Ben, but IMO the 5% "rule" is a really poor substitute for actually doing the math, and more importantly, misses three crucial parameters (two for Canadians).

Here's where I do the math comparing buying to renting a similar home: https://medium.com/financial-strategy/if-youre-renting-your-home-you-need-to-see-this-1dd55f06dfa -- which concludes that buying is financially better than renting in most cases, with breakeven happening between 2 and 3 years into the transaction.

This so-called "rule" ignores the impact of inflation (see more here: https://medium.com/financial-strategy/why-prepaying-your-mortgage-is-almost-always-a-terrible-idea-88fa87977d77).

A smaller problem is that the cost of maintaining a home is in my experience about 0.5%, not 1%.

Finally, I think you miswrote something here:

"If you live in the U.S and you can deduct some or all of the interest you pay on your mortgage from your taxes, that pushes the math to favor renting over buying." -- you should have written that a mortgage interest tax deduction pushes the math to favor buying, not renting.

Edited to add the link to where I thoroughly debunk this 5% “rule” and show how the “cost” of buying can actually be negative, or a gain, let alone not being 5%: https://medium.com/financial-strategy/3-simple-reasons-why-ditching-the-5-rule-will-save-you-money-fd1880232b7d.