You always have to have somewhere to live. If you can afford the payment and not be house poor, I would stay there. Why pay rent and not own something? Where I live rent is damn near what it is to own your home, depending on what you rent. It just doesnt make sense to me to pay someone elses mortgage. When my wife and I started dating, I owned my home and she rented, when we decided to get married we bought a house together. I sold my home after 2 years and pocketed 60k, she had been renting for 5 years and walked away with nothing from that.
If you have kids, you will want to raise them in the country, if you are living in town you'll eventually want to be out of town and at that point may be priced out of getting a place you'd want.