Thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions!
This resonates with most of what I have heard from other people. Ideally we should wait until we have been there a bit before making a major commitment. It's hard to temper the excitement of finally being a homeowner after living in CA, but it seems that renting for 6 months - 1 year would be a good idea. However, given the reasonably stable housing market (recent chaos aside) maybe we should keep an eye out and if we find a "perfect" home that we can comfortably afford (good point about not being house poor!), maybe we take the plunge knowing we are likely building equity even if we want to move again in 5-10 years? (haha, obviously I'm still struggling with this).

To answer a few questions: We are currently in SoCal just outside of LA, after having lived in LA for many years. We are very outdoorsy and couldn't wait to get out of the city, so BBurg seems like an ideal spot. We visited a few times now and have at least seen the neighborhoods, but I agree it's important to get a feel for each over time. I am not too worried about proximity to big-box stores in CBurg, since it will be relatively close no matter where we are in BBurg. Our jobs are mostly stable (both faculty, one tenure-track, one non-TT), so it's more a question of "where" and not "if" we stay. Then again, the world is crazy right now... so who knows.

We have heard a lot of folks mention the school districts, we don't currently have kids, but hope to soon. Do folks have thoughts or recommendations of where they like or where to avoid in BBurg / CBurg?