What are some things to investigate/ask before buying a house?

When buying a house, you should run some comparables on the house to similar ones that have sold in the neighborhood. Some great sites for this are: www.zillow.com and www.realestateabc.com. These sites allow you to look at pricing trends, price per square foot over several years.

You should be able to figure out the house payment you can afford and save that for 6 months without touching the money. If you need to dip into the money, then you probably can't afford that much mortgage per month.

Depending on your income level and the age of the house and how up to date it is, you need to know that getting a tax writeoff from mortgage interest and taxes should be reapplied to maintaining the house and not used to stretch yoru budget. If your income is high, then much of your tax writeoff is eliminated with the nasty AMT Tax. Houses are living entities and need maintenance, repairs and upgrades. If you use your tax writoff to stretch your budget, then you won't have any money to keep it updated.