OTOH, is it SO bad to live in an apartment, where you don't have to worry about maintenance? You just pay your rent and be done with it?
tangentially - but still a peeve!) I hear this all the time from people who are wondering why lower income families keep kvetching about not being able to buy a home - just rent! It's great! No maintenance, no RE taxes..... what no one seems to want to talk about is that middle/lower middle class and working class rentals are often NOT well maintained, at least not around here. Getting something repaired or replaced is difficult and management has little incentive to follow the rules - Churn is the name of the game. Whereas before one could buy a fixer-upper for less than or equal to a rental cost and manage to actually come out ahead if you were able to do most of the work, or barter for it, that's so much harder now.

We did this. Bought a fixer farmhouse. Did our own basic repairs, painting, roof repairs, swapped basic labor for electrical work (you could do this sometimes with individuals, not with big companies!) Sold that house to buy a bigger/better one, still a fixer-upper, which we're still in now. After 35 years, it needs some work that we're unable to do, and our barter ability is gone, sadly. I like barter - DH once helped his dental surgeon move some of his office furniture for a free tooth extraction.