How to best buy house from parents while also buying land?

[Forrest M.]

Hi folks, my wife and I are in talks with my parents about buying their house. It's their primary residence that they've owned for about 30 years. At the same time, we're looking to make a group land purchase with another family member (three parties total) to have a vacation spot that can also bring in rental income.

For purchasing the primary residence, we have a flexible timeline (next five years). They purchased the house for $100k and the current fair market value is $440k. They bring in about $7k/mo from pensions and social security, way more than they spend. With that in mind, they'd be willing to sell it to us for a discount. Let's assume $300k for calculation purposes. I have one sibling, so the preference would be to actually transact on the house now rather than waiting for a (hopefully) long time for them to pass and inheritance to kick in (or doing some kind of monthly wealth transfer, although this is an option if necessary).

With the money from the purchase, they are interested in buying land as a group for friends and family to visit. We can assume a value of $250k for this purchase that would likely also become their new residence. This effort has an optional additional family member interested in participating in exchange for access to the vacation unit (doubling as an investment for him).

Our goal is to become the owners (or at least occupants) of the first house while minimizing the tax burden for all parties involved. Is there a crafty way to do so? I plan to contact a real estate lawyer but first wanted to tap the BP community so I can be somewhat informed.

Thank you!

Sidenote: my wife and I have well-paying jobs (well, only one of us now due to covid layoffs) but $160k in student loan debt, if that could at all be a factor in this.