If you give advice to your buyer and it goes bad, then you may be liable.

I do get the reference and loved Breaking Bad. 

Even if all of these things are in your PM agreement or tenant lease, still sounds like a bad PM to me.I always do a pre-move out walk-through with the tenants. 

But you have a choice - self manage or let the PM manage.

Then I wonder what happens to the investor who lost 10 homes.. what happens to him and then he or she gets sued.this has all sorts of very serious repercussions short of just should I let a tenant slide one week because of the largest natural disaster to ever hit the US>> I think it boils down to investors with money and reserves probably will work with folks.. investors who are mortgaged to the hilt this could be something that really hurts them and they will have no choice but to be hard @$$ non caring landlords regardless of cirucumstances.. and then you just have the plane old greedy could give a crap landlords. sorry for your troubles you owe money..

Is a 40% equity stake normal, or a good or bad deal?  

Obviously it's bad news with any rental situation but I believe it could be much worse if you share the same home. 

Man I wanted them so bad- apparently they told the realtor that they loved the place, but I didn't hear this until a day and a qualified tenant later.

My two large losses this year happened because of bad, fluffed CMA's that we went by because we bought before we had access to comps ourselves and had a general knowledge of the neighborhoods. 

Probably not the first choice for most, but they are based in OH, so at least understand the local landscape.