This wasn’t a required expense.Property Taxes - $926.88We put in the offer to pay the full years property taxes vs. split them at the time of the sale.

Primary home is a little easier but for FHA and other programs it requires 12 months title seasoning.There is something called delayed financing that if you purchase a piece of land and pay for the home "All Cash" without a mortgage you can get up to 80% LTC.

So, perhaps hiring a couple day laborers to help them move or even paying the 1st months rent on a storage unit would be better.

Normally, when the listing broker realizes it is going to court, they will pay up before it gets that far. brokers are not going to pay the EM out of their pocket .. that is not going to happen .. as stated above EM deposited into an escrow can only be released upon mutual agreement signed by both buyer and seller with instructions where to send the money..

Since generally the benefit of a house hack is to hold the primary residence loan as long as possible, if you hold it long-term, you could still be forced to pay the mortgage insurance 10+ years down the line.Plus, you can only have one FHA loan (with some exceptions) at a time, so I'd rather use this house hack for 5% down which I can repeat and save FHA for another time. 

Rewey: Your Comment: "the ultimate solution is to pay it off if it gets called due."

I recommend you start with duplexes as you should always have a paying tenant.

Trans union missed an obvious reject candidate and now I’m paying the price.

There are cheap PMs, but I think you end up paying for that in the end. 

Let them pay the deposit with a credit card.