Generally, yes.
Say you want to buy a house for £130k. You have £10k and save £1k a year for 10yrs while living in cheap rental. By the time you have £130k that house has more than likely risen in value, as it’s an appreciating asset. It’s probably now worth closer to £250k....so you either have to save double the amount or buy something half the value of what you wanted originally.
If you got a mortgage instead, you would be paying about £600 a month, and have benefited from that house price rise. Mortgage payments on the capital plus the appreciating price means that in 10yrs you are sitting on about £170k worth of equity now. So you’ve paid less per month on the mortgage vs saving (£1k vs £600) and end up with £40k more, all while living in the house you wanted. Of course a lot of the time, the mortgage payment is the same as the rental, so you could save the £1k each month as well (although it would be used for ongoing costs that come with home ownership).
Obviously ideally no one wants the mortgage, but generally people don’t just have £100k + materialise in their bank account one day. It’s saved up over time, and as above, this time is better spent borrowing the money (particularly at such a low rate), rather than constantly chasing a rising house market, which you will struggle to keep up with since it’s outperformed wage growth for decades now....
Obviously rising house prices are not guaranteed, and it comes with risk as any debt does, but it’s far less risky than car debt, particularly if you buy in the right area.
Also...people need somewhere to live so don’t really have much choice...!