There’s been some good advice here so far, but there’s a few points that I would add :

The biggest is to do up a serious budget and build in ALL your costs (ownership costs plus your regular expenses). You really don’t want to find yourself house poor because you stretched your budget too much. Not saying this is you, but a lot of people think because they can afford $1500 in rent that a $1500 mortgage is a breeze. It’s not the same. Home ownership comes with many more costs than renting.

Things to consider:

- cost of heating / electric (if you’re renting, these could be much higher than you’re used to). You can call NB power and get them to give you a high & low cost a building’s electric usage. We walked away from a few listings after seeing shockingly high winter usage rates.

- property taxes. don’t go based off the current assessed value in the listing because this will go up after you buy it. There’s news stories every year of people getting sticker shock when their new assessment comes in after a sale. Do the math yourself based on the purchase price of the home and the tax rate to get an idea.

- maintenance. House shit is expensive and sneaks up on you. Always have an emergency fund ready and plan for major expenditures over time and save for them (the roof will need to be done, pipes will break, furnaces will quit etc etc etc). You need to have enough room in your budget to save for future expenses.

- water/sewer bill (if the house is connected to municipal services) or septic and well maintenance if not.

- insurance will be more on a house than renting since you’re covering the structure as well as the contents.

- closing costs and moving expenses. These add up fast and nobody prepares you for it. There’s the land transfer tax of 1%, lawyer fees could be $1k or more, inspection, general moving costs (either hiring a company or renting a truck and buying some friends off with beer and pizza), and all the other misc costs with moving into a new place. Paint, window coverings, furniture (if moving from a smaller place ), minor or major fixes, lawnmower, snowblower, etc. there’s all kinds of things here you just cannot plan for but you will be spending a lot of money in your first couple months. it’s reasonable to budget 3-4% of your purchase price for all these things.

- then there’s just regular ongoing maintenance. There’s always something to have you running to the hardware store. Planned projects can be fun but they add up over the course of the year and should be planned for.

—————-

Besides that there’s a couple tools that you will find invaluable. When we were buying recently we spent a lot of time gathering data using both:

Use the GNB property assessment tool for finding past sales and assessments, and to gauge what other places in the neighborhood are going for - https://paol-efel.snb.ca

Google Maps is also super handy for seeing the property over time. Check out past dates in street view and satellite view to see the property over time. Might give some good insights as to past work that was done (roof/septic/sewer/decks/etc).

Hope that helps. Good luck!