If you want to minimize risk, stop putting yourself in a position where your life might be destroyed: stop renting the illegal apartment.

I used to have super great credit until a disaster of a divorce hit in 2009....had 2 foreclosures as a result, 3 young kids to raise and credit destroyed...  

Keeping everything under one business could lead to disaster if one of those businesses is financially or legally destroyed, which leaves the rest of the company's assets wide open to being litigated.I hope this helped give some insight.

I figure one unit could be completely destroyed and cost maybe $5,000 -$7,000 to gut and put back together.

I was thinking about having them in my rental units I plan on rehabbing but I'm afraid they'll get dirty quick or get destroyed.

Why would a landlord maintain a property that a tenant is only going to destroy.

Or even destroying the place.

And to be honest, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to sell your property where you don't actually live, where windows are boarded up and the property is destroyed.

Focus on finding the seller who just found out last night that her tenants destroyed the property.

The house this woman has rights to is literally destroying the value of the neighbors home.