.: It's not an issue IF their lease is scheduled to expire.My personal practice: when a tenant submits an application, I let them know I intend to contact their former landlords.

Quote from @Jermaine Washington: Hello fellow landlords!

The challenge was balancing the relationship between landlord/tenant and a personal/friendly relationship.

About 5 years ago one of the sellers we bought a multi family from told us about a company that has a lot of landlords like us and we coshare insurance coverage.

Not a landlord anymore after 27 yrs!

Have you ever heard of a Landlord being sued by a Tenant and losing property?

That may be a little too aggressive but I do enjoy landlord friendly states as opposed to the tenant friendly ones.

Thankfully for us, we are seeing a lot more accidental landlords who aren't able to sell at the price they want and want to rent for a year or two until the market turns around. 

Relationships are key -this off-market deal was found through a longtime realtor friend and my last seller financed deal was through a landlord/client I worked with for several years. 

All units would be metered so data would be there to bill the tenants (so no ability to question the bill) but landlord would still pay the bill given we can not have 4 main master water meters (can only do 2 x1 master meter + x1 sub meter combinations).