good questions. I would keep renting and save as much money as humanly possible. Sure, you are taking a big hit tax-wise. We are too, so you are not alone out there. You may be able to pick up quite a bit of rental properties in IE at half off in 3-5 years, making them income generators, not monthly losses.
As for OC, we weren’t sure how long we had to wait. And given the tax issues, we couldn’t afford to keep waiting for OC to drop to the bottom. Another issue with OC is the prices are so high, even a 20-30% fall would still be pricey. So we moved to a place where we felt the prices are actually falling right now in real time so the wait wouldn’t be so long and endless.