Do not buy a house right away, especially some really
cheap rehab house that is in a horrible place to live. Your coming out of
school, you have no ties to a place, sounds like no ties to other people currently, just a dog. A job is not tying you down. Chances are you will never be so unencumbered again in your life. Odds are very good that in 10 years you will be married with a kid, a job with golden handcuffs and a home where you spend your weekends mowing the lawn. If you don't go live on the
boat now, what will happen is you will spend the next 35 years dreaming about it. Please trust me on this. If you have the "boat bug" seize the moment. If you don't enjoy the
boat thing you can go do the house thing. It might only take you a couple of months to figure that out. If you have $10,000 - $20,000 you can buy a boat that you can immediately move onto.... don't put any more
money into initially. Live on it till you determine how you feel about it. If you don't like it sell and buy the house. I do have one caveat to this
advice. If this is a purely financial decision, go buy a house, or rent. If you think you might like living on a boat for the "romance", beauty of the
water and the camaraderie of the group you will be with then try the boat. Good luck