House buying process

My husband & I currently live in PA. We would like to buy a house in GA or SC. This would be our first time buying a house & we are clueless😂 We looked into first time home buying programs for both states & they seem pretty good. Don’t need a huge down payment & they work with you. But do we need a lender first? Do we need a realtor first? Do we call a lender/realtor in GA/SC? What do we say? We really don’t have the time to be traveling back & forth, so is it realistic to expect most things to be done online/over the phone? (We will obviously travel to look at the houses, but how can we get it all done in one shot so we aren’t going back & forth?) I’m 25 weeks pregnant, due in May. We would like to move shortly after baby is born. Thanks in advance!!

*If anyone can suggest areas of either state as well it would be greatly appreciated! We don’t want to live in a city, definitely a more rural area (I could live in the middle of nowhere, but my husband not so much lol) so maybe somewhere in between!

**The lender has to be for the specific area like the realtor, correct? The GA first time home buyer program is pretty helpful bc it gives you the lenders for each region of the state. So we can’t reach out to a lender here, it has to be one in the specific region we are looking in?