I've learned long ago that the renders of unbuilt buildings we're all accustomed to seeing almost daily are never to be taken at face value. It takes only one disappointment in the form of a finished building not looking nearly as sexy as its pre-construction renders to accomplish.
There are way too many variables in the design and construction processes to be able to confidently claim that a building will turn out exactly like its renders since the laws of physics don't apply to 3D imagery.
Renders are indeed a very useful tool for many reasons and I think very effective most of the time, but it's when architectural illustrators take liberties with reality that it becomes a problem
The B1M has an interesting video on the subject and I think they are right on the money.
That's not to say that other forms of representations cannot be deceitful, but they're harder to fake, owing to the representational constraints (blueprints have to be to scale) or the laws of physics (photography can deceive but only to a point).
Have you ever been bitten in the ass by a rendering that pushed the limits too far?