My friend and I bought our first house together last year.

It was a huge hassle getting through the loan process, and we ended up having to switch mortgage companies after months of being strung along by someone we should have dumped much earlier than we did. The houses we liked and could afford were getting snatched up so quickly, we lost our top pick within hours of the viewing and had to make a rushed decision based on what was left. We realized much later it was probably the wrong decision, as we picked a townhouse and all the reasons I didn't want a townhouse are currently a problem--including a big one, which is the HOA dues, which were misprinted on the home listing and never corrected even as contracts were signed and payments were being made into our account. The HOA, now charging us 10x what we were expecting to be charged (and doing very little of value with that money), claims the money we already paid up front was simply lost in the process and there's nothing we can do about it.
I also had to quit my job because my store manager and multiple supervisors all told me I wouldn't need to wait for an opening at the new location to be transferred, only to be told at the last second by the district manager (who was only there because the store manager left) that I did, told me I didn't do my job by asking (even though she was aware I had asked everyone available to me and done everything I could be expected to know to do?) and that there were no openings, at which point we were already under contract and there was no way we could simply back off and wait. Then after we finally got moved in, it inexplicably took 2 months for my things to arrive because of issues with the movers, and I had to switch delivery people multiple times while the company was no help whatsoever. And of course, having no job = no insurance = no medicine, and months of no medicine + lots of stress = disease flare-up, which in turn = not being able to go out and find a new job right away as planned. And my doctor wouldn't give me a referral or anything, so I had to start all over finding new doctors with no insurance and wait even more months going through paperwork to get some kind of assistance.

Cut to now, a year and a half later, and we are struggling a lot financially due to me being out of work for so long and still having to pay insanely high bills for treatment even with all the financial aid I was able to scrape up, we're stressed and we kind of hate our house. Even more so because all the stress and lack of money means we haven't put hardly any effort into making it feel like home. It just feels like a temporary solution, even though we had to buy it because there was no affordable rental available, so we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

But at least it's mostly ours, I guess. And now that I've at least got some things sorted out on my end, I can start looking for work soon. And even for all the stress it's given us and how long it's taking for us to get settled in and back on track, it's better than where we were. We were desperate to move as quickly as possible for a very good reason, and while we ended up rushing into a not-so-good situation, it's still an improvement and not something we can't handle. We're slowly getting on our feet.

So my advice is don't rush anything if you don't feel like you absolutely have to, shop around not just for houses, but for people--realtors, mortgage lenders, anyone else involved in the process. The people you have to entrust your time (and possibly money) to can make or break your experience. If you feel like you're being jerked around and can afford to stop and/or switch, do so without hesitation.