I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to buying a forum or website, Just want to know what to ask, Look for, What notes & just basic pointers for when i buy a site/forum & what i will need.
for hosting: look at spacs, features such as cpanel, fantastico, php, asp.net, cgi etc.
for forums: try out the demo of the forums and look for speed, stability and user-friendly (expecially for admins)
You should see traffic figures, if it's a forum, it's size, amount of members, brandibility, your ability to develop the site if it's not already developed.