Tenants vanish 1 mth before lease end, owing thsands, what to do?

[Lala Weiss]

Hi BP community. I own a single family and as my first house a.k.a 'mistake house' I'm sure experiencing a steep learning curve. I house hacked, then land-lorded and am now out of state so I'm officially a long distance landlord. BP coincidentally just mentioned this issue in their latest podcast, being out of state I made the (now obvious) rookie error of not doing regular touch ins with my tenants, I only did 1 inspection a year and they knew I was self managing and out of state. 

Dealt with all the expected.. extra people living in the house, extra pets, expected damage to walls from nails etc etc. BUT I made an agreement with the tenants that I wouldn't evict them mid lease when we discovered an extra person had been living in the house (contract breach), but that we would update the lease to add the extra person as a sublet and they would pay back rent for the time they had lived there. The tenants agreed, and signed a new lease agreeing to pay the rent back by a certain date. Fast forward to the last month of their lease and my friend checked on the property to find it vacant. They had already paid their last month rent at the rate for 2 people (not 3) when they moved in. 

Am I surprised? No. Here is what I have already done, leading up to their last month I started sending a weekly email or text asking about the back rent and reminding them of the lease. I was told by them that they would send me a copy of their drivers license and the back rent asap. The replies stopped and obviously the tenants decided to forgo their deposit and bail. I warned the tenants that if I discover that they vacated the property or if they refused to communicate that I would contact the Credit association to inform them of unpaid rent and contract a collections agency to get back the amount owed. ($2500). Note: The house was left clean, I have new tenants moving in this week.

Have you dealt with this before? I know I made some obvious errors here, I didn't train my tenants well, didn't create an environment of accountability, was too friendly initially, I've learnt my lesson. So with that in mind, what would you do moving forward?