Hello reddit! I'm coming to you because my girlfriend and her dad are putting me in a tough place. To start I am 20 and my girlfriend is 19, I currently do college online and I am a service engineer and I travel anywhere in the Midwest for my job. She is in college and is wanting to get a house for us and her dog. The dog plays a huge part in renting because many places around us don't allow large dogs (she has a rottweiler) furthermore many places to rent around us are crazy expensive and do not want large animals and especially one on the "banned dog list". I want to buy a house and start building equity and I can afford a reasonably priced home. We have looked at many houses online and viewed a few in person. We found a 2 bedroom 1 bath house that is perfect for us for a reasonable price of 79k. The house has an assumable fha loan that I can get with a 4 percent interest rate. That sounds amazing to me. The price is negotiable so I believe we can talk them down a little. The issues on the house is the exterior pant is chipping and many things inside need a cleaning up like the hard wood floors. I am a handy man and I can do all of the work on the house.

Now onto another house. We found a 5 bedroom house that is listed for 160k. (It was right next door to another house we was checking out so my girlfriends dad wanted us to look at it). I believe the house is way to big for what we need. The 2 levels upstairs are ok but the bottom floor needs work. The kitchen is partially unfinished, the bathroom isn't finished, the floors was installed wrong so it needs to be replaced and there is many other things that need done. I was approved up to the price of the house but I personally think it is to much for us.

The hard part is my girlfriend and her dad think the smaller house isn't enough and needs a lot of work. The main thing they think is that the large house has more potential for an investment and making a larger return when we sell it in the future. My girlfriends mom is torn inbetween the two but my girlfriend and her dad think it's unacceptable to live in the 79k house and want me to buy something atleadt 140k and up. The topic and causing quite a bit of arguments between me and my girlfriend and her parents.

I have shown them the extra costs of the more expensive houses like the extra monthly payment and the overall amount towards interest and tax but they still think it's more beneficial to buy the more expensive house just because of the possibility to flip it for more down the road.

What can I do to convince them otherwise? I seem to be going no where