I always stand on the side of buying if you are going to be there long term. At the end of the day, you've got control and no one can kick you out of home at a moment's notice.
Why do you think realestate will crash?
More broadly... why is this forum always so bearish on realestate, but with stocks.... it's always a fantastic time to buy (even at the "top")? Haven't your realestate markets (on average) always recovered and reached new highs too?
Ergo... isn't the best time to buy always yesterday?
I am trying not to lather this post in too much sarcasm @Ives, apologies for the derail and if it doesn't answer your question.
You may need to give a bit more background for a full answer. Are you looking to buy in a market where houses cost $100k, or $1m? Where there are a high proportion of owners, or if it is an area more friendly to renters? Whether your property you are living in is falling to bits and in need of repairs or if your place is brand new?
The problem with this is when buying a house, you are not buying the "real estate market" - you are buying one very specific, undiversified asset in the real estate market. The correct analogy is buying a particular company's stock, not buying an index fund. Even accepting your premise that the real estate market, like the stock market, will always go up eventually, that doesn't mean that specific assets in those markets always go up. It would be like putting your net worth into Enron or Worldcom or Takata, with no diversity, and when those crater to nothing (likely never to return), saying "wait, I thought the market always went up?!" It did, but you didn't buy the market.
There are tons of houses whose net worth craters. If it returns, it returns in a very long time. There are whole cities or parts of cities that are ghost towns where the houses are barely worth the paper the deed is on (Detroit, parts of Baltimore, places devastated by natural disasters). Maybe EVENTUALLY those places will recover, but if it's your primary residence, "buy and hold, damn the volatility" has real practical implications. Do you "buy and hold" while your block is no longer serviced with electricity or water by the City of Detroit, perhaps for months? Do you "buy and hold" while the neighboring houses are abandoned and filled with squatters?
Sure, all of the above are EXTREME examples. The more mundane examples are just a real estate market that's drops 10-20% and stays there during a span of years when you'd really rather move. Maybe you get a great job opportunity in another city, or a family member needs full-time care, or you want to sell your expensive house and FIRE in a lower-cost location. People often can't just easily "buy and hold" their house, waiting out the market lows however long they will be, because their lifestyle and location is so intimately tied to it. None of that is true of stocks, individual or market.
Sometimes a house is an ok investment, occasionally it is a good investment, lots of the time it is just a luxury good and you can choose whether you want to buy it. Do the math, don't just rely on trite phrases like you're "throwing away" rent money, which often do not pan out in dollars and cents.
Recommended reading:
https://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-investment/