With regular buyers you have the opportunity for an emotional purchase, thus driving the price higher. 

Being your hometown you're probably emotional about it, but if you want to make $$, move on.

While it's exciting to get into RE investing with a partner, you really have to get the emotions out of it and look at it objectively.

The lease option suggestion by Eric Whitting sounds good, but it also sounds like it could get complicated as emotions mount over the six months, and I may have some problem enforcing an option on a “childhood neighbor.”

This is why people say it's a business decision, all the emotion out of it. 

Step one, figure out a way to get the emotion out of the process. 

But the problem is because of the car being expensive already and me eating about 6k on my trade the payment is $571 a month which I realize now that my emotions settled down is WAY too much for my income and makes my debt to income ratio extremely difficult to buy a house. 

The elderly are a massive group in FL and if the wrong person heard you were giving a family a hard time in a difficult emotional season the decision may turn out bad for you.Maybe you could work with the family to move the belongings into a storage facility while you advertise the unit.

I partnered on this project with a fellow BP member which proved to be a great decision as we could support each other emotionally through the ups and downs, lol. 

From experience, the main issue in this thread, is you are thinking with logic, and others have emotion involved.