Give it an hour grace time for them to come up with an emergency friend's house to move the basics into, otherwise follow through with the eviction.

As long as the cash flow is still acceptable during the first year I could live with it.I'm wary of over leveraging but I do have an unsecured LOC for 10k for emergency reserve and would want to keep that out of the deal for 2 reasons: Its high interest and without it I would be tapped out and in trouble if bad things happened.

After a lot of agonizing consideration, that emerged as the right solution for us.

What If you had to turn off water for a emergency repair and needed to inspect their apartment before turning it back on,, might be worth a try.Camp out till they are gone and then enter, leave a note you've been in for repairs.. 

.$0 for general maintenance - I don't live off my rental income, its all extra, I divested last year of all my older properties, and with my unit count I can easily absorb general repairs from my monthly cashflow.Prorated amount of Capex - as an example if a new roof will cost $5k and I need a new roof in 5 years, I want $1,000 in my reserves year 1, $2,000 for year 2, $3,000 for year 3, etc..Then outside of my real estate investment business reserves, I have a personal emergency fund/reserves I could tap into if needed.

Stay away from the property unless there is an emergency repair or fire.

This is great news for those properties that are in the high-risk flood zone, I would suggest that you do two thing flood mitigation (comes in many forms and sometimes you can get access to grants and loans to do the work) and transfer your risk through insurance, just make sure you are working with someone who is savvy in the emerging private flood market and NFIP you don't want to overpay if your agent writes the policy incorrectly and you don't want to buy a policy that an agent that doesn't specialize in flood insurance might sell which sounds good on price but really isn't coverage that will get you back to whole.Last note every community has a FLOODPLAIN MANAGER a government job, I would suggest if you are going to do any mitigation work get their thoughts and council, they can also offer resources and contractors or surveyors that can make sure your mitigation is doing what you want that is routing the water away from your structures.   

you could move in with tenants in apt 1 and rent  yours out.1st download landlord tenant laws for your state.2nd join a landlord association in your city if possible.3rd get a message machine. don't call back if not emergency, if they need help they can call 911,, if it's not a leaky toilet..4th put some money in savings.. your gonna need it. 

You asked what cost can jump in the middle of a project.Holding cost - contractor says it will take 2 months and ends up quitting or taking 2-5 months (with no savings or emergency funds you’re in a pinch)Fix up cost - it’s all good until walls start coming down.

I'm a Portland NET (neighborhood emergency team) trained to respond in a disaster situation, and even with that knowledge and bias, I still believe that the chances of an earthquake happening while you own your properties is low.