I mostly agree with you, but I think you missed one problem. Suppose you bought the 3 bed house. You'd have big mortgage payments to make every month. It all depends on when you sell the house. Too early and you would be sitting there watching the market increase further. You never really know when the market will turn, and if you left it too late you could be in negative equity with no way to sell the house and trying to make big repayments, perhaps having also lost your job (since these things happen at the same time).
In other words unless you've got a foolproof method of predicting the future, or you love the thrill of huge financial risks, I think you made the right decision to live within your means.
A three-bedroom house means the poster could have rented one or two of the bedrooms out. Tenants are of course their own sort of risk but that's a common strategy for young home-owners looking to reduce their monthly payments.
I'm not castigating the guy because I think the prudence you're advocating for is far more wise than getting oneself into a financial jam, but there are ways to approach a risk like a house payment and reduce it.
In other words unless you've got a foolproof method of predicting the future, or you love the thrill of huge financial risks, I think you made the right decision to live within your means.