I'm curious what use case you've come across for this sort private lending arrangement? 

Luckily, I work a block from the property and our schedules mesh, so I don't see a real problem with keeping up this arrangement.

Sellers also don’t get hit with outrageous capital gains all at once.Some cons of this type of arrangement is you may pay a little higher interest rate than you would with a traditional bank loan.

The issue is we made arrangements to take the house over after the 30 days and to change our plans now would cause us financial harm.

And same can be said for HNW(high net wealth) Tenants, some don't have the personality to stand the tenant complaints that all the landscaping is 1 color of flower vs an arrangement, or this or that nit picking type of thing like "those wall colors are so last season" lol. 

This was a much preferred living arrangement for her & her children.

During the appraisal, I'd arrange for a fake white uncle to drive up and ring the bell to deliver a lemon custard-filled vanilla Bundt cake and Princess Elsa balloons, offer to take me to Chick-Fil-A after the appraisal.

The benefits are: the seller gets the sales price they want--his hesitation may be because he thinks the market will drop between now and two years from now; you get to purchase the property and may be able to negotiate lower payments through the seller with a balloon mortgage arrangement, reducing your monthly payments below what you would get from a traditional bank; seller should get enough 'income' from your debt payments to cover their own debt payments--this will not be sufficient incentive if the seller truly just needs cash for some other reason and isn't looking at how to make the most, long term, out of this property; seller holds the title on the property until you have paid in full (once you refinance within a few years) and if you default on your payments, they retain that title so have really lost nothing other than time, etc.

I also recommend that you arrange to do a lot of the non-skilled work on it yourself...it's what most of us do - even when we have the financial strength that we don't have to do it.There's no upside for a lender to take the risk on financing this. 

Alternatively, if you would be interested in meeting up to  share insights, I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting.Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.