Only use-case I’ve had for rental was when I was at a military school for five months. My roommate and I needed a TV in our barracks room, but there wasn’t much point in buying a TV (each of us had TVs back home), so we rented one for five months. It was great. One of us also bought a Wii (dating myself here), so it was a great time.

That’s about the only case I can think of renting furniture/appliances. If you are temporarily someplace and can’t thrift an item at a reasonable price.