Maybe that's conventional wisdom, but I simply disagree then.
Just because everyone tells you not to buy a house doesn't mean you should buy one. I didn't buy my house because everyone told me not to, that would be incredibly stupid. In fact I would even go further and say that doing the opposite of what everyone tells you to do for the sake of being contrarian is worse than just going with the flow.
You can listen to people's reasons and try to appreciate where they are coming from and you can definitely learn from that, but making a decision on the basis of what everyone else is saying to do, one way or another, is bad advice.
I am 99% sure ska is saying that "lots of people would have suggested to buy a house in 2009."
I was not in a position to buy then, but IIRC the market had plummeted the previous year and was at an all-time low; if you were in a position to buy, it was a great time to do it.
I have to disagree a bit here. I remember at that time, 2009, nobody knew whether the market had bottomed out or not. There was still extreme nervousness with regards to asset prices. Prices actually bottomed out in around 2012, which is when my wife and I bought our first house. We didn't do it because we knew it was going to be the bottom; it just so happened to be when we had saved up some money and found a place we liked. Point being, I think the OP is correct; most people in 2009 were saying not to buy, from an investment perspective, because it was thought that prices were likely to keep dropping.
Exactly. So Kranar's scenario I think boils down to "although conventional financial planning says it's a great time to buy a house, I thought through my own situation before doing it".
I can't argue with the logic but not sure what it contributes to the OP point.
I don't know who your "everyone" is, but to do this is extremely conventional financial advice...