Owning (kinda) means you won't be priced out of your favorite vacation spot as well. If you buy when you can afford it, you can keep going to the family beach house indefinitely. If you rent every year but your income doesn't increase with rental prices (which at least during COVID sure do seem to be outpacing inflation), you might not be able to take your "usual" vacation in a few years.
For me the thing that got me to briefly consider buying a vacation home was the flexibility in arrival/departure times and the corresponding advantage regarding traffic. At least in the DE-MD-VA-NC beaches where my family typically vacations, almost all rental houses are rented by the week, with either Saturday or Sunday as the arrival/departure day. Departure times are pretty strict (usually 10 or 11 am) as the place needs to be cleaned in time for the next week's rental. So everyone is on the road at once and traffic Saturday and Sunday during the day is just awful. The last time I drove from DC to the Outer Banks it took me a full 12 hours. I was so annoyed that at the end of the week, I left around midnight the night before scheduled departure, and I made it home in 6 hours. I made the return trip in half the time! If I owned the place, I could show up and leave whenever I felt like it (or not at all)!
For me the thing that got me to briefly consider buying a vacation home was the flexibility in arrival/departure times and the corresponding advantage regarding traffic. At least in the DE-MD-VA-NC beaches where my family typically vacations, almost all rental houses are rented by the week, with either Saturday or Sunday as the arrival/departure day. Departure times are pretty strict (usually 10 or 11 am) as the place needs to be cleaned in time for the next week's rental. So everyone is on the road at once and traffic Saturday and Sunday during the day is just awful. The last time I drove from DC to the Outer Banks it took me a full 12 hours. I was so annoyed that at the end of the week, I left around midnight the night before scheduled departure, and I made it home in 6 hours. I made the return trip in half the time! If I owned the place, I could show up and leave whenever I felt like it (or not at all)!