As another commenter pointed out, buying a home to live in gets you lower interest rates than buying for any other reason.

> but the ability of corporate owners to use depreciation on a new purchase to offset profits from previous purchases is more significant.

If you're referring to cost segregation, this is probably less true now than in the past. It used to cost a lot of money to do a cost segregation analysis, and made sense only for apartment complexes (i.e. the cost to do the analysis vastly exceeded whatever savings you'd get on a single house). So only rich investors who owned 20+ unit complexes would do it.

I've heard that in the last few years, many accounting firms are providing it for relatively cheap, so ordinary investors can do it now.

RE people make a big deal about depreciation as a tax benefit, but it's minor in my experience. You're effectively reducing the cost basis, so when you ultimately sell, you have to pay a larger tax on the capital gains. Overall you gain, but not by a lot.

Perhaps if you combine with a 1031 exchange, you may get a greater benefit.