Like all things....it depends.
If you intend to stay in a property for 5+ years, and you’re a first time buyer, I’d say to buy. Having a foot on the ladder is certainly worth something and the risk of falling house prices (and this is a very real risk) is mitigated by the fact 5 years will often be enough for recovery to happen. The way to further mitigate and reduce risk is to buy a do-er upper where you can add value. The worst property to buy is a new build where the price often sinks before it rises and there is usually no value to be had. You are most exposed in a new build when you buy it at the top of the market....and that is likely to be around now or soon.
If you already own and don’t need to move and have flexibility, I’d wait at the moment. It’s easy to be caught up in the frenzy, but house prices are very likely to drop and if you can wait a year or two until the economic consequences of all this are felt (job losses, less support to housing market from government....sad things for lots of people which will drive prices down) then you could get a bargain. But again, if you intend to stay long term, it can be worth just getting on with it.
The only other time it can be worth waiting, and this can be a risk, is if just another year of saving can mean you get the house instead of flat or the 3 bed instead of the 2 bed. This can cut out another expensive move 3 years down the line. The risk is prices rise faster than you can keep up with and you still can’t afford the bigger property and can afford the smaller one less easily. So you have to be realistic about the leap to the next property up and only save another year, if it really will be just another year and it’s not relying on too much saving in that period or an extremely limited rise across that period.
One thing that is certain about the housing market is uncertainties. We can predict broad patterns but exactly when they will happen and the magnitude to which they will happen is very difficult to predict. So often, just getting one with your life is the best thing, especially if you can mitigate the risks, I wouldn’t buy new build now. I wouldn’t buy an unusual house that might be harder hit by falling prices. I would buy somewhere where value can be added via modernisation or loft conversion or extension...even if you won’t do those immediately.
Sometimes, with hindsight, you realise you didn’t buy at the exact best time and if you’d waited or brought forward the purchase by a year, you’d have been 20k or more better off. As long as that 20k doesn’t give you negative equity or mean you can’t move later when you want to, or ruin some other big plan, you just have to forget about it and see it as 20k over a long term mortgage, that eventually means very litttle. Life has to be lived and moving up when you can afford it (assuming you need that bigger property ...not always a great idea if it then ties you to working patterns you’d rather not have) is usually the right thing to do. This certainly applies to getting your first property. For others, it’s often obvious a bigger property is needed. Quite how much bigger and how much stretch to go for, with all its consequences for you g families in particular, is something every family has to decide for itself.