A nitpick: no you aren’t, unless you don’t have property tax and homeowners insurance in escrow paid out of your mortgage payment.

I understand where you're coming from. You're not wrong. However, I'm paying those even if I'm renting. (Granted, not to the tax man or the insurance company, but the landlord certainly counts them when he hikes the rent price.) Further, in owning, those expenses continue even after I've paid off the mortgage.

Here, we're looking at the differences between renting and owning. Since I can't avoid those expenses under either circumstance, we can ignore them here. In this same category, we could also include condo fees, homeowner association fees, storm sewer fees, etc.