As for buying a house vs renting and putting more in retirement, there are so many factors that there's no right answer. On one hand if I was in a market like where I'm from in PA where real estate isn't an appreciating asset (in fact, factoring for inflation I'd say it depreciates in northeastern PA) I wouldn't view a home as an investment. On the other hand, housing is so cheap, why not buy? On a third hand, no investments you make in the property will pay off. On the fourth hand, the rental stock there is AWFUL...
Yeah, anyhow, the decision is easier for me out here in CA. Rents continue to escalate and, barring some mass exodus from LA and Orange Counties (two counties whose population combined exceeds the entire population of Pennsylvania, the sixth-most populated state), at best I see rents stabilizing in the next five years. There is a value to locking in your cost of housing if you have stable employment and you expect the cost of housing to continue to rise.
I don't live close to Silicon Beach, unlike Servo, but with people being priced out of that area by all the tech companies, combined with the gentrification of LA, it has knock-on effects throughout the region that I believe are somewhat independent of national trends.
In other words, YMMV.