The tenants in back apartment were married, was informed by the female that they were getting a divorce but she would be fine paying rent alone.

In these instances typically the lender will pay it to protect their interests. 

He’s to pay us $36,000 immediately and we.

The way I look at it if you are open for business and you have a business line, and there are owner questions or issues that needs to be dealt with you should take the call and handle the business of the call.

Either way if it helps someone out especially going through what he mentioned it may add some gratitude and help him avoid further late bills.You can get more bee's with honey so in some cases it can pay off being a little more lenient. 

Once you fix it up, you could refinance to pay off the HML.If you do it right, you should have enough sweat & forced equity to have 10-20% equity for the refinance.

We wanted additional units to pay mortgage and have cash flow.

You shouldn't be paying any lender anything before a closing.

The current owner is letting me take over the property as a tenant as long as I pay the water bill and the mortgage payment on it and whenever I decide I can purchase property for the balance of the mortgage  they are in no hurry for me to purchase the home as long as the mortgage is paid. 

It is not like your product line gets banned by the government or your company is bankrupted.