Some great advice thus far. My wife and I bought our house almost 4.5 years ago and it has been great so far. A lot of work but well worth it in the end. You get a sense of pride when the lawn is nice and green and mowed and the beds look great and people say things like "Your house looks great!" I felt just like you leading up to the home purchase as it's a huge financial commitment though. At the time we were living in NY on Long Island and were renting a one bedroom apartment. We had been looking there for a home for some time but we were just never satisfied with what we would get for our money. Keep in mind this was before the market took a huge hit and the market on LI was at it's peak so $4-500,000 bought you a decent fixer upper which would have taken most of the homes an additional $150-200K to get to our liking with 9-14K in taxes every year tacked on. We had friends move to the Charlotte, NC area and we decided to visit one weekend and fell in love with the area. While we were here they took us to look at homes and we were amazed at what we could get for our money here as opposed to NY. Needless to say a couple months later we were having a house built here and preparing to move. We did buy a house that was larger than we actually needed at the time with the intention of not outgrowing it and staying for a long time. We are more of less paying the same amount of money now for almost 2900sq/ft (4bd/2.5bath) new construction home that we were paying for a bread box of a one bedroom apt in NY. We figured worse case scenario if we weren't happy with the move we were young enough where we could move back to NY and more or less have our jobs back and sell or rent the house in NC and say we gave it a shot and move on. Needless to say that never happened and when people ask me when I am coming back to NY for good I respond "NEVER!" My only regret with the whole thing is I wish we would have moved here first and rented for a few months to get the lay of the land and than buy a house after rather than buy a house after a few weekend visits and do everything from NY. Simply because a lot of the places we like to go and things we enjoy doing are a little ways from where we are living now and there are other neighborhoods I would have much preferred living in now that I know the area very well. Not that ours is bad but I have friends who live in some neighborhoods that have clusters of people from the same area and the neighbors seem friendlier where a lot of the neighbors here keep to themselves and aren't as outgoing or friendly. I can go to a buddies neighborhood and if he's not home a neighbor will see me and invite me over for a beer or just come over to shoot the sh*t and hang out and I'll end up hanging out there with them whereas here it seems like a lot of the neighbors avoid each other although once the weather breaks I am breaking in my new neighbor since I learned that he too is a cigar smoker. It's because of that though that my wife and I plan on eventually selling this house and moving if and when the housing market ever improves. We're fine with traveling to go do things but we just want a friendlier neighborhood where getting together with a group of neighbors for a BBQ in the Summer won't make you think hell just froze over.
Good luck with it! It sounds like you'll be moving to a new area and buying a house there so learn from my mistake and rent first and buy later even if it's only for a couple months just so you get a feel for the area and all it has to offer.