Pizza good for you. I cannot give you an analysis of the area since it is out of my expertise but I can say renting is a serious strain on my family. As for the numbers behind it all whether you coul dhave done better by waiting the answer is invariably yes if you measure your life by sheer numbers. However, many people do not measure life by only numbers so that is something only you can measure. Ditto what others said above.

Also as for the trustee sale. I assume you did what my friend did at his recent purchase at the trustee sale. That is, he figured out his maximum price and then brought all denominations. That is if you have a max budget of say N, you would bring a cashiers check for N/2 in series. Example would be if your budget was 600k you would bring cashiers checks of 300k, 150k, 75k, 37.5k,…. thus insuring you would have any denomination from 300k to 600k. (I am sure someone will correct me on my math).