Buying or renting

we rented for a yearish, now buying.  terrified its a terrible idea but the rental market here is very bad.  houses furnished shockingly bad, every time I look it disgusts me and the landlords are shady - we got very lucky with our rental but want to move

We now know we're happy here and probably looking at 5 to 10 years window, so seems ok.  It's definitely high risk.  You have to be very careful where you buy wrt resell value.  Like we saw a 400k house in Tarxien, yup, run for the hills on that one, it will never sell again etc

There seem to be strong opinions both ways on this one. I chose to buy, as I am set to be a permanent resident, being retired and with nothing to go back to. People in a different position will have different criteria.
I have come across several people who rent, who have fallen victim to the vagaries of their landlords, which has left them somewhat vulnerable when rentals are becoming a bit thin on the ground, at least at short notice. Others have had much better experiences, so I suppose it may be down to the luck of the draw. Personally I have experience of tied accommodation in the past and the vulnerability that comes with it. While this is not relevant to this particular argument, it did teach me the value of owning my own home.
There is always the question of what to do if and when you want to leave, so choosing value over cost has to be the guide. The island is not getting any bigger, while demand is rising, hence the rise in the price of rentals and purchasing. In just the past couple of months the market price for what I have settled on seems to have run away, but of course, in the ten years you are talking about, any property you buy will be ten years older, so it would be best to start with a new build or fresh renovation.
It seems that resold properties come full of someone else's junk under the heading "fully furnished and ready to move in to" so negotiate a price for the naked property and make an offer for any thing that you might actually want. Faced with the price of having to get rid of the stuff, a more reasonable valuation may be arrived at.
AS in all things; Choose wisely.

We have rented 3 apartments and 1 house with pool in 4 years, before finally buying our town house last year, I have 2 school age children and plan on being here for a fair few years yet. We are in Gozo, and feel we got a real bargain.
The buying process was really really quick, from first viewing it, agreeing a price, having searches done on it and going and signing the deeds and paying took 4 weeks!
We had to have some building work done on it which has been more of a headache, due to a mixture of problems with Architect/Planning Authority (was MEPA)/ builder. But finally having moved in over Christmas last year, we are really settled and enjoying our new home.
I have never owned my own home before and I do like the security of owning my own place and finally putting down roots. When we moved apartments in the past, the reasons were road noise, noisy & rude British neighbours, and the landlord not renewing the tenancy due to wanting holiday lets. So a variety of reasons.
Ironically now living in the centre of Victoria and love the hum of the traffic noise and hustle and bustle of life outside.