What sort of financing can you arrange?

They specialize in real estate, but it wouldn't surprise me if they know about cross-border work arrangements.

Now you have a deal worth something.If this is owned free and clear and you can arrange for seller to carry note at say $1M at 5% interest for 2 years, you have now added even more value and could sell that deal for more than $25k fee.

A lease/option is just an arrangement when these two interests are executed in conjunction (at the same time) with one another.  

What I find is if you do that and tell the students you are doing it the electric company I find seems to leave the electric on for a day or two between if the students don't make a turn on arrangement. 

I suppose, in this case, they could have arranged for the water to be hauled in with water trucks.Lots we don't know here. 

And such Realtors need to understand "Net Listing" arrangements as all may not be good at all.

The key is to try to contact the previous owner and see if you can buy the property subject to the existing mortgage, or make arrangements with their lender to halt foreclosure, if the numbers work.

Prior to this, we arranged payment on our own with the guest.

No lender can require that a borrower remain in the property forever over the term of a loan except for government liens that might be financed under low income qualifications (for example, a city finances a sewer project to a low income homeowner with a forgiveness of debt arrangement, the debt may be forgiven so long as the property is occupied).