I bought a few homes earlier this year. I am pretty sure that I could get a better deal near the end of 2012, but I didn't want to sit on USD until then. I was quite uncomfortable earlier this year when gold and silver were on a tear so I jumped (and missed out on the BTC spike due in part to being busy with that stuff. I would almost certainly be sitting on whatever I had accumulated at that time but I would have gotten in cheaper and probably would have gone mining.)
good luck with those homes. hopefully for you we don't go into the 2nd wave of deflation. everyone assumes the Bernank will inflate away their debt. i'm betting against that.
I was not worried about either inflation or deflation. I wanted to be sitting on just about anything but USD or instruments that I needed the help of a semi-functional financial system to capitalize on. I thought about financing as a hedge if inflation occurred, but in the end the fees and interest made it not make sense to me...and it would have been counter-productive to what I wanted to achieve (e.g., dumping $$$)
I figure that a place to live is always worth about 30%-ish of a typical earners potential no matter what the economic conditions. And if TSHTF, I'll likely have some family who could use a place to live anyway. Prices where I bought seemed fair enough even if (both you and) I suspect they very well could be getting even better.
