In the US I often see well paid friends struggle financially after buying a house (I do live in a high cost area in the US). And most landlords (again, US) will accept a bank statement with 12-14 months rent in lieu of a salary check. You can prepay 12 months to avoid any questions whatsoever.
I would personally avoid buying a house before jumping off as that would occupy my mind instead of freeing it. My 2c.
"..And most landlords (again, US) will accept a bank statement with 12-14 months rent.."
When I was starting a company and without a salary it was really hard to find a landlord who was OK with this. Some seemed to be thinking "eh, this is different from the norm and I have plenty of applicants so it's not worth the mental trouble", and others "irregular income situation probably means they sell drugs".
Right now, in London and if you have a 15% deposit, its cheaper to buy a place than to rent from month to month so I guess it depends where you live. I always thought it was better to keep my savings liquid for startup capital but I found myself going back to work because I did not like spending it on rent. I figured that I would continue my project at a slower pace in the evenings and weekends and cover my expenses in the meantime. This is not a good recipe for swiftly setting up a startup.
Good to know. One difference may be buying a flat in a multi-family building, so the costs of major repairs (roofs and such) is shared and can be handled by a management company for a fixed monthly cost / subcontracted / insured against. That (I think) makes total cost easily predictable.
My observations are from US where more than one family I know bought a house (old house, expensive because of the good school district, which is why they bought it), assumed low maintenance costs, then got hit with some sizeable repairs (as the house is old). Not trying to generalize, that's just what I saw.
I would personally avoid buying a house before jumping off as that would occupy my mind instead of freeing it. My 2c.