I'm one of those (apparently rare) people who prefer to rent. I apologise in advance for a long post - I have written this in case the OP (or other readers) is genuinely interested in the views and experience of a 'choice renter'.
I was a late 50s baby and grew up in an era when renting in the UK was actually cheaper than having a mortgage. Almost 50% of the population rented then, it was considered far more normal. My parents managed to buy a cottage-in-a-field to do up for the £2000 they'd saved up (!!) and they lived there for the rest of their days. During my childhood, the thing which was most frowned upon was having a mortgage, as you were 'tied' to a mortgage company for 25 years - a life sentence! Also, the idea that someone would buy a property as an investment wasn't prevalent, people bought a house to turn into a home. Full stop.
That changed during the Thatcher years when Thatcher pushed the house buying idea. Since then the drive has been to buy your own property, leading to the modern view of renting which deems renters as "lesser citizens" because we haven't bought our own home.
For this reason, if ever asked, I always say I intentionally rent.
My experience living overseas has shown me that in other parts of the world renting still doesn't carry such a stigma; and in places such as Scandinavia, rent controls make the process so much fairer.
Why do I choose to rent?
Being able to choose how and where I live (I have lived in, and still do, occupy lovely properties situated in beautiful surroundings which I could never, ever have afforded to buy but I can afford to rent).
The freedom from having to pay for repairs and maintenance - if the roof blows off it isn't me that has to pay for it.
The freedom of being able to move easily - two month's notice and I can be gone. No advertising/estate agents, solicitors and so on. I'm not tied to anywhere.
Now I'm older it will be so easy for my family when I die or go into a nursing home. I've reduced my belongings to a minimum, there's not much for them to clear, they hand the keys over to the landlord and it's done. Having cleared and then sold my late mother's place, it took forever and was such a worry. My family won't have to go through that.
Add to that the obvious reasons which other pp have cited, mostly to do with being on low wages, the impossibility of raising a large deposit, the rising cost of housing and so on.
I'd also like to say that "renting" covers a much wider spectrum than the obvious suburban house or executive flat for a professional situated in the city centre type scenario.
There are all sorts of rural cottages available for rent at cheap prices, where you can live in peace for a long as you wish and decorate/do up the place as you wish too. I have rented some of them. There are some fantastic landlords around who do not over charge (yes, I know, plenty of awful ones too) - the good ones deserve praise, landlords come in for too much negative comment these days.
You also need to consider the wide range of renters themselves.
Of our 10 million pensions, 1.4 million exist on state pension only and the majority of those rent.
There are roughly another 68,000 who live in 'tied accommodation' which is tied to their jobs but which requires some small rent. These include farmers and agricultural workers, some country house hotel employees, and those within the church such as clergy.
By far the largest renting sector is our young people, over 69% of 16-24 year olds have to rent as the cost of housing in the UK is too great. That's a huge jump from the 1990s when only 10% of young people rented. Amongst young families, Google tells me that there are 1.8 million who rent.
Which all leads me to believe the subject of renting is far, far more complex than we would like to believe.