As to the OP, in my opinion the thinking is pretty sound and I more or less feel exactly the same way.
I am jealous of my friends who have all locked in sub 4.5% 30 year loans. I think their monthly payments will be laughably small in 10 years. Housing prices may go up or down in the years ahead, but unless you are buying in an area that is still heavily on the overpriced side (or maybe even if you do!), I think it will not outweigh the simple benefit of locking in a low nominal payment. (And in aggregate, payments are as low as they’ve ever been).
The hitch is that this only works if you stay in the place (or at least keep it, whether you live there or not) indefinitely. I myself am not ready to commit to buying my indefinite house. There are various reasons for this, but the main two are: 1) a desire for liquidity due to owning my own business, 2) I happen to like living in the areas that are still pretty spendy compared to rents (ie, payments wouldn’t be locked in as low as they might in other areas). As a bonus item the house we are renting is the greatest house ever, which really reduces motivation to buy. If not for these me-specific facts, though, I would probably have already bought, and serially refi’d all the way down to sub 4.5%.
Note that only one of those reasons is related to the market, and note that even that item only applies to certain pockets of town. So, it comes down to personal situation such as how certain you are that you can commit to stay in the place long term, what area you want to live in, etc… but in some situations, I think it absolutely makes sense to buy for exactly the reasons outlined by the OP (and I have told many a client exactly that).
