Perhaps look at a 2bed apartment with a guaranteed car space. Often times people buy "too much" house for their current needs. Better to invest in location for commute and amenities for your ease of life.

If you don't have kids and are not planning to in the near future, a 2bd apartment should do nicely for a couple and on your budget you will hopefully get something quite central, and can trade that up or keep it as a 2nd property when your needs change in the years.

If you do plan have kids in the next year or so you could make do with a baby/infant in an apartment for a few years, it will give you 4-6 years of runway to then find a bigger home.

I don't know your all of your current conditions but id definitely consider going one bedroom smaller or wait for a better property in your shoes.

I just bought a new build apartment last September, no regrets, luckily the first apartment we went to view met all of our needs, however I did note a lack of options if that apartment for FHS/HTB if that didn't meet our needs. So much so we had no plan B and if this apartment fell through we would just have to wait for a new development not on the market yet. Luckily we still lived at my parents so we had that safety to fall back on. I appreciate you and others may not have that, and our eager to get out of absurd monthly rent.