i am in the process of buying a home in new haven right now on basically the same salary. your best bets are going to be the neighborhoods that are further out from downtown -- amity, fair haven heights, and morris cove/east shore all have a number of single family homes in the $200k - $300k range and are relatively nice places to live. the neighborhoods that people on this board recommend for renters (east rock, wooster square, westville to some extent) are going to be prohibitively expensive for home ownership. new haven is a small city where virtually everything is within commuting distance via a short drive/bus/bicycle ride so i wouldn't worry too much about the distance.

you might also want to look into the yale homebuyer's program if you are buying in new haven proper -- the university tries to help its employees stay in the city proper by offering incentives to buy in certain neighborhoods. i'm not a yale employee so i don't know all of the details, though.