If you'd like, offer them the option to void the lease since no money has been exchanged, but it sounds like they want to move in and chances are they will pay the deposit.

Offering the listing agent a chance to represent you for double commission?

Hopefully we get a chance to meet at one of the REI meetups.

Once the seller put the house on the market, he should have gave a heads up to the tenants that are on month to month that there's a chance that the new owner may want some or all of the tenants out.

Turns out MDC was sending the seller "estimated bills" for a number of years. 

The Beginning of your statement sounds like bird dogging but i get what your saying.and overall these are some great advice and all these apply to all of those that have this same problem right now, i always believed that  trying to get loans searching online or asking around which isnt a bad thing to do but the likely chance of someone getting a loan to help them out with a credit score this low is unlikely as some of ya said, so there is only one way to do that and that is to work and pay the debts off, mainly the utility bills that need to get tended to especially if you wanna live in your own space again, or if its for the first time.We all had some unfortunate circumstances in life, Death in the family, force to get bills put in your name by someone so they didn't take the blame of not dealing with those bills themselves, and that's someone you don't wanna live with trying to push everything on you  and make it your responsibility, sad reality but at the end of the day it gonna be your responsibility anyways later on.

I'm 30, single, no kids, and currently working as an Estimator / Project Manager for a commercial site construction company for the past 10 years.

Does anyone have any ballpark estimates on what it would cost to remove a cesspool, and replace it with a septic system?

Tentatively estimate (for convenience) the 50% rule for expenses.

could you set it up as an escrow item(credit from seller) and use a written estimate for the after close repair escrow?