If you really want to buy, then go for it, but from experience let me tell you a few things...
1. Renting is not always throwing money away if buying is so much more. What those mortgage calculators fail to tell you when they say your payment will be $1000 a month is that you also have to pay taxes and insurance. Our $1000 house payment is $1480 with taxes and then we pay another $118 a month to our association because it's a townhouse. We were renting for $950 and now we pay $1600... That's a BIG difference...but bankrate.com said it was almost equal.
(We didn't know!) I could have saved $600/month for 4 years and had a lot more than the equity I have now. $600 x 12months x 4years is $28,800. Instead, we have gained less than $10,000 in equity in 4 years. Talk about throwing money away.
2. You said you might move in 2 years. We have lived in our townhome for 4 years and we are out of space. We paid $193,000. Several on our block (same model, sf, etc.) are selling for $202,000 and sitting on the market 3-6 months. We have to replace the carpet and do probably $2000 worth of stuff just to get the house ready to sell. After real estate commission we will get back
LESS than we paid for it. And since we don't know how long it will take to sell, we can't put a contract on another home because we absolutely cannot afford 2 payments. That complicates things.
3. They won't really do 100% loans any more, or 80/20s. You pretty much have to have 10% down because the bank doesn't want to risk you getting upside down. We will have to take a loss on ours, but WE will take the loss, not the bank. They don't care if you lose money as long as THEY don't.
BUT - It IS a buyers market, whereas we bought at the top of the market. You will get a better deal and your house probably would go up in value or stay the same. You might get a deal out of a foreclosure or someone who is desperate to sell. Find a GOOD real estate agent who teaches you and doesn't come off as a salesperson. Sign up for Yahoo! real estate alerts so you know every house that comes on the market in the area you want to buy so you know what a good deal is when you see it.
Good luck!! It's an adventure!