<prompt> Human: Hello. Using a throwaway so I can give personal details out.My husband and I have relocated to an area and need to live somewhere. We are currently staying with family but would like our own place as soon as reasonably possible without rushing into a purchase. A nice house here is not within our budget when property taxes are considered. For example, a 150k house will see taxes of about 4-5000 which is unacceptable for us. But thats a whole other discussion.So were looking at buying a 120 year old twin shared wall. I dont love the house but husband promises it will be for only 3-5 years while we save up more to buy a nicer house. The whole idea of this makes me weary, even just considering the costs of buying and selling a home, to say nothing of what kind of maintenance something this old might cost us. I should note Im a stay at home mom to a 6 mo old so Im going to be spending the most time in the house while husband commutes 35 min from this location. Heres some more info on us:Income 36K. Likely more with overtime, but as its a new job we dont know for sure what that will come out to. So well just say 36.Previous house sold for 185 and we should walk away with about 60-65k in equity.We have a little over 20k to our name between checking and savings at the moment. We need a second car soon and are figuring around 5000 max on that.Only debt is 8k in student loans, comes out to 160moNo other investments or income.The house we are looking at buying is 80K with taxes of 1800, about as cheap as were going to find around here but its been on the market for almost a year so I think that will be negotiable. Sitting this long on the market makes me nervous about resale but our realtor thinks it was due to the rough northeastern winter.... We were thinking of putting 40k down and having a nice low monthly payment. But Im wondering if it makes more sense to put down only 20 16k and not wrap so much money up into a temporarystepping stone house. We could then invest the money from the sale of our last house. Right? What do the experts of rpersonalfinance think? And if anyone wants to talk me out of a house I dont really like, Id welcome your thoughts on that as well. My husband is in love with the place...Thank you, and I will provide more details if necessary.Edit: more info given  <response>: My advice would be to rent a house. You wont be gaining enough equity in 3-5 years to offset the costs involved in buying and then selling the house. 