A few things I took away:

• Don't get yourself into a mortgage / utilities / taxes situation where you're dedicating more than 50% of your monthly income towards living expenses. This is probably more in general than just for buying houses, but given how weird / heavy costs come up for maintenance and improvements, it's a good idea to be able to save plenty, or at the very least, be pretty liquid. This was my upper limit in determining what kind of house I could buy (as the price of the house and the interest rate determined my mortgage payment). What percentage you set depends what you're comfortable with for supporting your family. I'm a single dude who has cheap hobbies. Your mileage may vary.
• If you can manage 20% down on a house, you can get out from under having to pay mortgage insurance. I didn't make it for mine, but I paid damn near everything I had, and I think I got my "insured" period reduced from 2-3 years down to a year. More you put down, the more you save in the end, insurance, or otherwise.
• It may help for convenience's sake to have a real estate agent, but for the 4-6 months I was looking, it was just my parents and I. Granted, my parents have bought a few houses and knew what to look for, but what you might assume are the "hard parts" of buying (financial stuff, underwriting, stacks of papers to sign) are taken care of almost entirely by your bank. Seriously. They will do everything. It's in their best interest to make sure they have a good investment as well as you.
  
  The only reason I ended up having to get an agent was because the seller's agent I was dealing with refused to deal with me directly on the house I really wanted, nor act as a neutral third party. Because the buying agent's commission doesn't come out of the buyer's pocket, I just called up one of my parent's previous agents, she walked on the property for 15 minutes, said "This is fine," and facilitated a few meetings and paperwork signings. Easiest commission she's probably ever gotten.
• Something is wrong with every house. Whether it's bad grading near the foundation, a bad roof, or a bizarre, 20' conex trailer in the utility easement, there's something wrong. The owners or their selling agents will try to hide it.
  
  Before you start touring any particular property, ask for paperwork on the current state of the house. Usually, people have to declare deficiencies, such as lapses in repairs, previous water damage, building code violations, etc. I made it a habit to read this first, then let somebody try to sell me something. It's also good to ask if they've had a recent inspection, and to read over any deficiencies in that document.
• Don't buy anything in a swamp (my parents work for the water utility.)
• Craigslist was always a place to start. After that, there were a few Alaska-specific listing sites (MLS). Maybe check if Washington has something like that. Also interesting would be if Washington has a similar public MLS database that includes municipal property assessments, previous owners, and previous prices paid for houses.

If I think of more, I'll post it.