Four points:
First, coop maintenance fees are much lower than those of individual home owners because of the economies of scale. Hiring contractors can be very expensive, since they usually do not take "small jobs." A large organization, otoh, can contract work at a discount rate. For example, if I have a plumbing or a furnace problem in a coop, our maintenance person takes care of it, and that cost me (indirectly) about 1 hour of his wages ($20-25?) If I were to call a contractor, however, I would need to feed the pig to the tune of $100-$150 per call (or more, if it involved slightly more work.)
Second, the final balance depends very much of how much individual house appreciates in a long run. Doug's data posted to this list show a long term increase in value is closer to 1% per year. At that rate, the final value of a $300k house will be only $400 after 30 years, far below my savings obtained from renting instead of buying, even if we factor in tax savings, which are rather meager for the income range of the vast majority of US-ers. Even if we generously double that empirical appreciation rate to 2%, the value after 30 years will be $533k - so if you take out what you paid ($1.5k * 360 months = 540k + $32k selling cost) you will end up in the red - about negative $39k.
Third - I do save money that I do not feed to the pig of money lenders, contractors, and car manufacturers, and that amount to more than $5k a year. And I have no debt of any kind, credit cards, mortgage, car loans, etc. I know, it is very un-American and I probably risk deportation is this continues :), but then why do I have to feed the pig to have a decent life?
Finally, I do not deny that some people make money on buying and selling real estate. I certainly did not lose any money on selling my condo and even made some. But there is a trick to it - helping hand from Uncle Sam and risk taking. I made money because I bought government-subsidized unit in a high risk area that was stabilized because of other similar government funded investments nearby. I would not make much, however, if I simply played the market, as most grunts are hoping to do. I can also assure you that the developers and real estate agents that were involved in that project made like bandits - and long before I had a chance to take an advantage of housing boom to reap a meager windfall.
So if the key to real estate profiteering is the visible hand of Uncle Sam rather than the invisible hand of the markets, let's admit it openly, instead of fooling ourselves that market forces are beneficial to people like us in the housing area. But then this would raise some difficult questions, such is why the fuck are public funds being spent to procure private profits instead of public goods?
Wojtek