Negotiating a bad inspection with mold & water damage

[John Banks]

Hi All - Looking for some advice on negotiating a bad inspection from the buyer perspective. Illinois 3 bed 1.5 bath single family 110 sqft 1980's home. Standing water evidence in the crawl space and mold growth (not black mold). Leaking toilet grey water into crawl space. Roof needs to be replaced and about 2-5k of other defects. All in about 30k of repairs needed for only 200k accepted offer price. The owners had no idea of the water/mold (i believe them and have done due diligence to confirm). They were not expecting any of these issues. So my question is how do I best approach this. This unit is also being rented and the owners are willing to work with us but could walk away too (fix it on the cheap and resell later). I really dont want to close and then fix it to then assume liability for anyone who gets sick from mold... My thought is to escrow an amount of 125% of the quoted costs during closing and have it fixed after closing utilizing the escrow. I dont want to prolong the closing and lose rents either.  Any advice on if escrow repairs are difficult or if its better to just negotiate a lower price upfront would be appreciated.