They now like to see fair market value for the home, regardless of condition.

Plan to rent the house for between $1200-$1300/month.Rehab Needed: The house is in fairly good condition overall (solid foundation; new high efficiency furnace; newer water heater; updated electric), but we are estimating $25k in repairs.

You could write an additional condition into your offers that your ARV must equal or exceed the appraiser's ARV estimate.  

(At this point, I prefer to hold them, cuz they'll pay for themselves in 2-3 years and keep on generating income.)This is not to take away from your good fortune, but to say that this is a repeatable success under the right conditions.

We replace the whole device every ten years.

The main con with student rentals is they don't always leave them in the best conditions.

They get a plethora of tax writeoffs, tons of loans and grants for home modifications, and there are a lot of requirements as to the condition of the property or teh sale will be denied.

Having already analyzed the current market value and ARV, there was still plenty of meat on the bone.One good thing to know with foreclosures, even though the property is being sold in 'as-is' condition, you can still get credits from the bank.

There are a lot of banks out there selling crap loans and conditions passing them off to potential customers as (great deals).

So I described the condition of the property to her & what I had observed during my due diligence.