But then again, she's a prodigy.
I think Mike's rental idea is the way to go, if you can't find a decent used piano for fairly cheap. My daughter's piano teacher is adamant that her students practice on pianos, and not keyboards (which was not a problem for us since we already had the same piano I used when I took lessons as a kid in the '60's ). Of course, if you end up with a piano that needs a lot of work, you can always send it up to Jim's dad in Michigan.