My wife and I bought in 2003 and sold our house in 2006. We too have been waiting for the market to come down and yes, its sucks renting. But tell your wife this…
1) EVERY housing downturn in US history has been an L shaped type crash, meaning prices do not just shoot back up. Prices will fall and stay low for a while
2) You said you dont care about timeing the bottom, but you and your wife must agree that its smarter to catch prices going back up than it is to catch them still falling.
3) Find other thing to focus on, like take a vacation or buy some furniture for your rental. If you dwell on when to buy, youll go probably end up buying.