Your deal does not.You could encourage the family to open a formal probate and the administrator sell the property to you during the course of the proceeding with consent of the cooperative heirs.

When we lived in Aberdeen, we would take our toddlers to the new playground there and they would call it the Elmo park.Like you, I am familiar with the WSG but not electricity being the ultimate responsibility of the owner.You can ask both utilities to get copies of any late notices, but don't expect a lot of cooperation from them.We have started giving the applicants a choice between including the utilities in rent and keeping it in our name or an additional deposit that would cover an average month of utilities.We have been stuck with about $1,000 total over the past five years, so in the grand scheme of things it isn't a huge deal.

This tenant doesn't to pay, we have tried a payment plan to get them back up to good standing, they have stopped paying rent all together and are not willing to cooperate with us at this time. 

After 3 months of fully cooperating with their demands, I got exhausted and told them if I'm not qualified enough by now then let's cancel the whole deal, I'll go with a different lender.

@Dennis M.I’m aware of the not so cooperative ex coming after everything.

Make it a win-win..... you gave him a discount for the last two month of his tenancy, and he can return the favor by leaving your place cooperatively... on time, clean, and without damages.About the repairs he's asking for you to reimburse.... does your rental agreement allow for that? 

However when I went to the public meeting about the issue the homeowners, while understandably annoyed and upset, are already attributing all kinds of mystery illnesses to this, which I believe to be bogus.Anyway, I have already told the tenants in the one occupied rental and they are cooperative and did not freak out or get upset about this.

Asking the tenant to control their usage is just not going to work, unless you get lucky and have a cooperative tenant. 

I'm sure police would be very appreciative that a landlord is cooperative, so go into it with that attitude and I suspect they will tell you the process if there is one.If you don't get anywhere, I'd go through a freedom of information act process to get the info.

@Brandon Cooper my incentive is if they don't sign up for my ACH (ClearNow) then I charge them extra $30 for processing the payment. erentpayments, clearnow, or similar ACH is the only way to go BTW.