If your job might move you within two years, I'd rent. No guilt.

Owning is great. It is also expensive to enter and expensive to exit. If there's a real chance you're in another city inside a couple years, buying means paying the entry costs, paying the exit costs, and hoping the market covers both for you in a very short window. That's a bet, not a plan. I know the counterargument: renting is throwing money away. I don't buy it. Renting buys you the option to leave cheaply. For someone with a transfer on the horizon, that option is worth real money. Where I flip completely: if you plan to stay put and you're buying something you could rent out later, I'd lean owning hard. Then the short-term math stops mattering, because you're not forced to sell at a bad moment. The whole argument hinges on your timeline, not on your feelings about landlords. Owner financing shifts this a little, since terms are negotiated and closing can be simpler, but it doesn't erase the exit problem. A short hold is still a short hold. So tell me where I'm wrong. Who here bought anyway with a move looming, and did it work out?