I am still going to be under my 3K budget and it will be done well before my self imposed deadline of one month, but remember when buying a HUD home or any home that hasn't been lived in for a while, no matter how good of a inspection you do, there are going to be little things that pop up that will cut into your profit.

Are they magically off budget?

A friend of mine that makes $300,000 a year, works at home (no overhead), has awesome cars, trucks, bikes, 4,500sqft home with 3 bay garage, always vacationing, partying and he was always depressed.

As for the original question, it's got a lot of variables, but I would say rent if the timeframe was shorter, but for '3 to 5 years' with potential that it may change, I'd look to buy now at a discount, depending on the budget Jay is looking at.

So, the owner ends up paying a lot of the expenses out of their own pocket (off budget).

We have a house payment, and a truck payment.

They are good at getting the projects done on time and on budget.

Hard to say without all the figures, but just from seeing 10-15k profit on a project costing 360-515k, thats a pretty small margin that you can easily eat up with a 65k budget.

Additionally, since they paid too much for their property, they don't have the cash flow to cover the expenses and therefore expenses for many things come from their personal account and are "off budget".

How much is your budget?