What happens now...
You're taking a pay cut, that's your choice. Whether someone else has done it successfully is irrelevant, but I guarantee many have done it successfully. You can, however, forecast your future pay in today's dollars buy looking at the pay scales. You move up one level every year, and should be promoted to Cpl by the time you've been in for four years.
There is still a demand for the trade, and there will be as long as we have aircraft. If there was no demand you wouldn't have been offered a position in it.
Most likely bases: no clue. That's like asking today if it's going to rain on May 17th. You'll be going to a base with aircraft, so that narrows it down a little. You need to be open to all the possibilities, but they will ask you for your preference while you are on your course in Borden. If you want more say, do better on your course. They often try, as much as is in their power, to get those who do well close to the location they want to go. But if you want to know for sure where you're going to go, then just ask to go to Cold Lake; I'm sure the Career Manager would be happy to fulfil that request.
Buying a house as a CAF member is the same as anyone else. No idea what the likelihood of you purchasing again is: I don't know your financial position at all, or where you're going to be posted. But many members buy homes.
The CAF does make it easy for people to join up, it just isn't that easy financially to switch to a second career once you've become relatively successful in your first. They have developed an entry plan that pays you decently well for an unskilled worker, and then subsidizes your education on top of that! Think about it: walk into an aircraft maintenance company and see what they'll pay you with your current resume to work on aircraft structures. Won't happen. You'd have to pay for school on your own dime and find the time to do those studies while working full time to pay for it. With the Air Force, you're getting paid to learn the skills necessary to be productively employed later on. That's a pretty good deal in my eyes.
No doubt you'll have to adjust your expected standard of living to accommodate your lower pay. But that's a temporary situation. It should be a "short term pain for long term gain" scenario.