No one said anything about buying a house to short sell. The housing market is cyclic and does go up overall but how house poor and the quality of life you want will be determined by when you buy. Would you rather buy at the height or the low regardless of how long you plan on keeping it? Buying at the low allows you to build instant equity. It also gives you more padding for lower payments, avoid pmi, leverage your equity for heloc loans, let's you be house rich, etc.
No one should be buying houses right now as it's at the height.