However, she is also in a bit of a battle against time with the foreclosure being filed and may cause a handful of additional hoops and stress on her that this woman does not need.

Everyone needs a place to live and if your properties survived the covid epidemic with collections than you have already went through a good stress test.That being said, properties are sold everyday off market and great deals can be made in any market.

After finding out about the auction, we ran a lot of calculations on the info provided by the auctioneer company but finalizing the deal was very challenging and stressful.

Grief is such a heavy weight and the stressful decisions and learning curves you're having to make only make that grief heavier.

A stressed seller has defered maintenance, defered payments, needs out fast, they don't know the best option and often the only way to help them out of their house and stress of needing to pay a mortgage and maintain a house is to offer: "well John we have a solution that we rarely go to since its not that common, but this is the only solution we can think of for you; You sell your house to us, we then are responsible for fixing it up etc but for the numbers to work we have to take over your mortgage payments after closing.

You could bring in a structural engineer to see if the foundation is still usable but being that it's almost 100 years old and how far technology has come in building practices, it doesn't seem to be the best option. 30K for a new foundation is a lot better than a whole new house when the old foundation can't handle the new stresses upon it. 

Apparently seller was super stressed about moving and had nobody to help them with it so they needed more time.

I have a couple older real estate advisers and some own around 10-17 properties.They always stress business practices that guarantee their ROI…because they remember buying properties at 500-5,000 and really making huge profits by buying low and waiting years and years to sell…and they still kept buying expanding territories and moving underneath the radar not ever really knowing until the next world catastrophe would hit but always ready for whatever.Recently, one of them told me his company made so much the irs came in to even verify the legitimacy and he said he sat their while they went through every paper and receipt his wife of 30+years kept and they are still together to this day making big bank…the advice was, “Always find a way to work with government entities and always have your paperwork in order.” 

And that depends on the property you have now.If it's a good producer then I'd stress test it's performance if I put additional debt on it. 

Go to website of California State Society of CPA's.