Cost of living is definitely much bigger than you make it to be. Just paying rent, car, bills, etc. easily cost 5k a month. A good chunk of my comp is stocks, which could go up or down with time, so a bit of a wildcard there. My wife is a freelancer, and she can bring home anywhere from 1k-10k each month depending on the market (and market is REALLY bad now), so can't count on that.
I might be able to save all my stocks, pray that they don't go down any further, and cash all of them for a down payment. Then I have to pray to not have any unexpected emergency or lose my job, since I dumped most of my life savings in a down payment.
I can certainly empathize, living in the Bay Area on ~half the family income and having bought at the peak last year.
All I can say is that no option will be risk free and all involve uncomfortable tradeoffs. Every choice has an opportunity cost, but they are mostly financial.
5k/mo including rent actually sounds reasonably frugal in a HCOL city, about as low as my partner and I wanted to go in SF. My only recommendation would be to pick a number for your emergency fund and pick a goal for your down payment. If you have a concrete goal, you can see yourself getting closer, unlike some nebulous idea. I considered my 401k part of my emergency fund and wanted a year of mortgage because I would spend that before selling the house if was laid off. The banks will tell you how much they are willing to loan based on stock comp and variable freelance work so you my not even have the choice to worry about that.
The worst that can happen is you lose your house and all your money, haha.
I might be able to save all my stocks, pray that they don't go down any further, and cash all of them for a down payment. Then I have to pray to not have any unexpected emergency or lose my job, since I dumped most of my life savings in a down payment.
Hardly what i'd call a middle class lifestyle.