Here are some things you can do to get ready: Identify affected products, departments and staff as well as the business-process, operational, and technology changes that will be necessary for compliance.

You gotta be available and actively involved on any job or you'll pay dearly in the long run.

Or is it better to try to find records at the county courthouse, or start contacting banks for their REO departments? 

Amber, the state department of finance, generally the higher agency has departments under them, insurance department, real estate, dept. of banking supervision, finance companies.

It didn't "change my life" but it did change my thought process about a lot of things, especially in the finance department.

After a few years of successful operations, you can look to banks' commercial lending department for future loans. 

You might even want to see if the person staying will be assuming full responsibility for any of the damages rather than splitting that up - you might even find that all damages were caused by the departing person and they both agree that the full payment for damages should come from  that share. 

Now the key part--do you take the lumps and focus on the next tenant or spend resources on chasing the old departing one for lost rent and damage.

I once went to the heavily barricaded (Clearly post-Terminator I https://youtu.be/kYt2HmAxHL4 ) police department for a property I was doing due diligence on and they were happy to tell me that the subject property 'only' averaged 20 calls a month!

Maybe even attempt to change departments rather then to quit  right away.