So you want a $100K lathe for $30K, yup, that's what we all want.
I went through this same thought process when I bought mine. What I wanted was a full on Mori 9 axis mill/turn machining center with all the bells and whistles, but I didn't have $1.5M to spend (or the power to run it). After months of searching Craigslist and Ebay, I wound up with a 30 year old Hardinge Conquest 42, with live tooling and no Y axis and no sub spindle or tail stock. It did have a C axis, sort of, with a 1 degree resolution. I picked up this machine for $9K and had to drive 1700 miles (one way) to pick it up. The machine is in excellent mechanical shape and came well tooled, just the value of live tools far exceeded what I paid for the machine. I didn't take long (about a week) before I realized that the antique Fanuc OT control was not going to cut it, so add another $7K for the upgrade to modern controls. I lost the C axis in the upgrade process, but this has not been too much of an issue, and I will add it back in one of these days if I really need it. We just have to do some second opps on another machine, a sub spindle would be nice, but that's not gonna happen.
Search Craigslist using Search Tempest https://www.searchtempest.com/ and Ebay. It took me a couple of months to find what I was looking for.
As far as a Haas, they are lighter weight machines, but we have been very happy with our TM 2P mill, it's been a real workhorse for us, and have had minimal issues over the last 2 years with it.