Gift property or sell property?

[David Wong]

We are helping  my parent-in-law to buy a new house. They own a Townhouse now. We want to take over the Townhouse as a rental property.

The plan was I buy the townhouse from my parent-in-law, and they take the money to put down to the new house, we help on the rest mortgage. We will have mortgage on the townhouse too and it will be rented out. 

But it seems another option is they can gift the townhouse to us. This way we don't need pay the property transfer tax. But We will not have mortgage on the townhouse.

Appreciate suggestions and advices here. Thanks