My girlfriend and I are both 23 years old, do we take the house or get an apartment? personalfinance

My great grandmother passed away 6 months ago leaving her house to her son, my grandpa. So he told me he would rent me the house. It would be $600 in rent and about $200 for electricity and $60 for water. Of course those numbers can fluctuate. That leaves a total of about $860 a month for the house. The catch is the house is in bad shape. She was a huge smoker and it is from the 1950s. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. You can see the yellow from the smoke on the walls and ceilings, so all the rooms need to be repainted. The carpet in the bedrooms and living room need to be pulled up and replaced. The master bathroom is in bad shape as well, and the bathtub has sliding doors that have rust all over them. The tiles in both bathrooms need to be repainted. The tile in the kitchen needs to be replaced and the cabinets need paint. We still need basics for the kitchen, a sofa, and dressers. The house comes with a stove, washer/dryer and refrigerator. My grandpa said whatever we want to fix has to come out of our own pockets. We have $3,000 in savings because we knew we were moving out. He also wants to buy a certain piece of land. If the land goes down in price, he will give us a months notice and sell my grandmothers house to buy the land. He said when it sells he will give us some of the money back for remodeling. If that happens we then have to end up getting an apartment. His wife, my grandma, is almost certain this won't happen anytime soon. I think remodeling will be about $5,000 but I'm not sure.

The apartment we want comes with the stove and refrigerator. It's just a 1 bed room apartment. We would still need to buy all the stuff for the kitchen, sofa and dresser. The rent per month is $850. The water and electricity is $50 total. So it would be $900 a month. There is a one time security deposit, pets deposits and and pet rent. We have 2 cats and a dog. We would not bring our dog if we moved into an apartment. Of course there would be no remodeling or renovation needed.

We're not looking to move until November, so that leaves us a couple months to save even more and purchase the items we need. We are having conflicts with how much it might cost to remodel and how long we will get to actually stay in the house. It is a lot bigger and has a huge yard. We have no idea what we should choose because they both have a lot of pros and cons. Financially, we're not sure what the best option is.

Submitted September 05, 2016 at 10:17PM by gremlinsnatcher http://ift.tt/2c2rhg1 personalfinance