A microwave is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to purchase than housing. In fact, they appear to be too cheap to be available at Aaron's for rent. So you're going to have to cough up $50 for a microwave from Walmart if you only want one for two months.
Houses would be a reasonable price if you couldn't profit off them, too. Probably cheap enough that anyone could get a mortgage working at McDonalds and if you had a good job you could just buy one.
Even if houses were half the cost, buying and selling one would be a long, cumbersome process that I would not want to go through just to live in a city short term. You're running off the false assumption that no one wants to rent.
