The housing market is flooded with buyers right now, all-cash offers and waived inspections. It's obvious to me that most buyers don't realize the risks associated with their investment, don't understand how to monetize them against rents from long-term buyers, and are just generally thinking emotionally and irrationally. Terrible market to buy in if you don't like spending the rest of your life paying off a money pit, unless you're somewhere like Cleveland where there's a lot of decent supply and less demand (I saw some pretty solid houses there for ~50k).

Good general rule of thumb is your cost of housing shouldn't exceed 30% of your income.