In declining his offer I would go ahead and set the expectation that you are granting him a promotional rent for this lease period only  and he should expect a rent increase at lease renewal.

@Grant Vincent.

Granted there’s always mistakes possible but for the most part I’ve done well on my own.

Exploration of solar panels with 1,651 hours of usable sunlight per year and attractive state and federal grants available.

This seems like a Down Payment Assistance like grant...We would have to figure out the terms of the Habitat grant. 

Granted, I jumped in ignorantly, not fully understanding the pro-formas, just looked at their track record.  

If all is going normally (including typical BS delays – we are not naïve), our documents grant an automatic 6-month extension.Since 2010, we’ve had exactly one issue with this.

So most folks get sucked into some fake lender thinking they are going to get 6% money or start going through the Broker daisy chains etc etc its a lot work.. granted there are a number of excellent HML that work fast out there for sure.. but there are a lot more that run from total fakes to just want to get your deposit money upfront then come up with 50 reasons not to fund your deal..

Granted that was several years ago.

I wish I had some list or workflow (granted one that can be manipulated due to differences in properties) that would include all of these possible items that need to be addressed or a better system in handling all of the different inflection points of a rehab.