In both cases, the tenant should be educated on their responsibilities and held accountable.Even if the water source were a leaking pipe or roof, you should be able to identify the problem, dry it out, and remove the mold professionally within a few days and then the problem goes away.Simply accepting the tenant's claim - without verification - and allowing them to break the lease without penalty is a bad policy that will cost you much more in the long run.

Every house has it somewhere and generally when it happens it is the tenants fault.. or in the case of Ohio basements are basically never ever dry.  

Economic downturns can be very destructive and jobs can dry up.

But here's something you have that I don't want: a checking account where your money is sitting there rotting while you wait to pay your bills.Instead, I have used this method to put all my CHECKING ACCOUNT FUNDS (ie. the money you have rotting in your checking account right now) plus a portion of a line of credit against my mortgage.

@Gregory Jerome It’s no longer legal to do a “dry” closing.....no funds from the B buyer, using the C buyer’s money to first the AB transaction, then the BC transaction. 

As you probably know, water in the basement will start to produce mold in about 24 hours, so your first order of business is to get the basement dry ASAP. 

It looks really solid and the roof sheathing and everything else looks very clean and dry.

There are a few different options/ methods (avoid the dry well in this case).

We use a Home Depot wet-dry vacuum to remove the crap and we put the crap in a few plastic trash cans.

It would be best to get it from friends and familyThose with little experience are struggling to raise money (I am in a group with 20+ syndicators and everyone is raising less and those who are first timers are basically drying up after first $500k-$1M)As mentioned syndication route would be your best bet but make sure to have a great plan in place on what you are going to do and how you will exit