Of course you can buy things with it. Liquid is liquid. Assets are assets. Assets can be liquidated. You have an asset when you have equity in your housing and you don't when you rent. The difference is burning 30-60% of your income vs. not burning that amount.
Tired of owning a home? Liquidate, rent, and you have that cash.
Yeah, I suppose that's true so long as your preconition of equity being more than the difference of mortgage+downpayment minus what you would have paid in rent.
For $1k rent vs $40k downpayment + a nice total monthly payment on a house of 1800, in 10 years rent would be 120-130k and home ownership 250k+. In 20yrs, a home would cost you 470k+ and assuming rent goes up by 500 in 10 yrs then by year 20, renting costs you 300k. Assuming repairs and maintenance don't cost over 100k in 10 yrs and 170k in 20 years, your equity is solid. But simply leaving that extra 800 mortgage cost (vs rent) in your bank with no interest gets you 92k in 10 yrs and 196k in 20 years.
The home equity according to my quick napkin math at best gets you 10kish more in 10 years and will be 20k+ less than savings in 20 years. Rent is unpredictable but so are insurance rates, natural disasters, the city/neighborhood driving down home prices for random reasons,etc...the element of risk is non-negligible.
Money invested or saved is also equity. Planning 20+ years ahead is crazy to me as well unless you have kids. To me, housing is not equity or investment. It is shelter and if the quality of live benefit near term is better or long term for kids would be better then it is worth it for that alone. The whole homes are equity thing is a scam to make people even more addicted to mortgage. People should be able to save and buy a house cash, that should be the norm and investing in houses should be illegal.
Tired of owning a home? Liquidate, rent, and you have that cash.