I don't know if I would go to a bank for advice. They are in the business of loaning money. Someone suggested that we see an accountant. He asked us to bring in all of our financial info. When, he saw it all, he said, we should buy a house because we were paying tons of income taxes. (interest payments are tax deductible and I think the property taxes are also.) We were older and had no kids at home. We both worked full time. He even gave us an idea of how much he thought we could afford for a monthly payment. We were surprised that we could do it. We found a realtor and told him what we thought we could afford and it took some time because we didn't have a lot of money saved for a very big down payment. The first month or two of payments was scary, but it worked out great. That was some time ago, but I would say to just get good advice.
Also, the person who sold the house to us had purchased a warranty at a low price to encourage the sale. I don't think we had to use it.