This tale does not reflect reality when you look at the numbers. Housing prices have more-or-less always gone up, especially on time scales long enough to spread out market corrections. If housing prices 2-3 years ago "seem like a steal" (they don't), and the same has been true every 2-3 year cycle (it hasn't), an FHA/USDA mortgage with 3.5-5% in basically every market other than San Francisco and NYC makes sense, and if you're making software developer salaries it should take less than a year to save up 3.5% of a home you can afford (again, other than NYC and SF which are outliers).