My reason to save was always retirement, end of life care, etc. And real talk, the money sink into my 401k is doing better than the money I’m sinking into the house I was lucky enough to score 5 years ago.
My main reason to buy a house was not because real estate was a better investment for me. It wasn’t. Like many of us, I hated my landlords, hated the fact that nothing ever got fixed in my rentals, hated noisy neighbors that were a wall away, etc.