A very good trend is that people have started accepting payment for real estate in Bitcoins. I am surprised by the fact that it is more profitable to buy an apartment than to rent, in my country the situation is completely different.
Just to give you an idea, in Lisbon, anyone who wants to rent a house pays twice as much as someone who has to pay a bank loan, even at this time of high interest rates.
So, if you have any possibility, which option to choose? If I had that option I would choose to buy instead of renting.
There's rent to own option on other country so much better to take that option if you can't afford to buy at the moment so that after years which agreed where the payment would last you can acquire that property unlike renting it without anything in return.
But much advisable with this option is to really buy a house since you cannot get any problem regarding on those monthly payment plus you can get this at much lesser rate compare to other options you are thinking of.