Cat and I started out going through a buyer broker but weren't
particularly satisfied with him after the first time he took us
around, so we elected not to sign a contract with him.  We went
directly to the seller's broker for the house we were buying, and we
got our mortgage from Cambridge savings.  (It is almost certainly
possible to get a slightly lower rate than with them, but they have
the advantage of being established and non-slimy.)

My real estate lawyer was Denise Provost (her number is in the last
link below) and I'd recommend her highly.  I wouldn't recommend my
home inspector at the moment, because I wasn't comfortable with a
clause in his contract.  If you need to get a separate pest inspection
(some home inspectors do pest inspection and some don't), Cambridge
Pest was competent-seeming and hassle-free.

I would recommend getting pre-approved for a mortgage loan from some
financial institution (it will cost around $25 which will be credited
towards your closing costs if you get a mortgage from that bank).
This will make your offers more attractive to sellers; it's no fun for
the seller to accept an offer and have it fall through because the
buyer couldn't get financing.  You can also get pre-qualified, which
is generally free and doesn't mean very much (since the bank doesn't
ask much and just believes what you tell them), but it's very fast and
it helps.

Useful pointers (I first started off with scanning www.realtor.com for
a few weeks):

/mit/ghudson/info/buyer - this was grabbed off a web page somewhere.
It's a document written by some law firm about the legal mechanics of
home-buying in Massachusetts.  Fully accurate as far as I was able to
tell.

http//www.realtor.com - Has fairly comprehensive real estate listings,
useful for getting a rough idea of the market.  Sometimes their
listings and search engines are more helpful than other times; dunno
why that is.  You want to actually see houses to get an idea of their
condition and the neighborhood, though.  Another site along that vein
is http://www.johncampbellrealty.com.  realtor.com also has links to
mortgage rate services which can help finding a low mortgage rate.  I
think there's also a Fannie Mae site.

The Boston Globe web site has lists of Saturday and Sunday open houses
each week; best to check on Fridays.  That can be more convenient than
calling up the seller's broker and scheduling a visit.

http://www.hsh.com - A good site for mortgage-related financial
information.

http://www.earthsign.com/joints/tradespeople.html - Recommendations
for local-area house-related tradespeople.