difficult tenants + absentee owner not willing to kick them out

[Yu L.]

I went into contract with this absentee owner. The ARV is $550k, contract price is $400k. The repair should be around $60k. However, there might be problem with the roof and major termite issue underneath the bathroom, since the wall in the shower was opened and the tenant just put something like a sheetrock there, it wasn't fixed properly, so water can go down and cause major damage to the subfloor or the foundation, which would greatly increase the rehab cost.

The tenants have been living there for over 23 years, they don't want to move, (a couple in the 50s with the dad in his 80s) so they don't let me in to do the inspection. Landlord inherited the property from his stepfather, he has $330k mortgage on it, he just do cash out re-fi this year and got $100k loan out of the property this year, so I guess he wants money. So to him there is about $70k profit.

I really need to do the inspection of the roof and the subfloor to see if that would cost me another $15k ~ $25k for the repair.

The landlord already filed eviction and received the Writ of Possession, so he can kick out the tenant and let me do the inspection. However, the landlord want to keep the rent coming in, that's why he doesn't want to kick out the tenant. We have been trying to get the tenant's cooperation to get in for the last 2 weeks without any success.

Without the inspection, it is hard to ask the seller to just lower it by another $20k, however, if I ask the landlord to kick out the tenant and then do the inspection and lower the price after that, the landlord might feel being used. And without the rental income, he might feel the pressure from the mortgage payment and be pissed off that I put him in that situation and cancel the deal.

So what would you suggest?