Hitting a "cash ceiling" is a common occurrence for property investors looking to scale and there are a few different ways to power through it.  

Now I’m curious though, is running credit and background on all partners, even if they aren’t bringing money to the deal a common practice with HMLs?

Better management and site layout, moving a few tenants around and creating more efficient common areas to increase the rentable square footage.

For utilities, I was hoping tenants can pay their own utilities but feel free let me know if that is not at all common in Chicago (will add water to my calculations). 

While it may be conservative, having a big cushion of available capital has allowed me to get through many sticky situations that were not foreseen going in (main stack and sewer lines being the most common). 

For me, the most common thing I've seen has been loan officers who are unwilling to admit they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to VA loans.

They are very common, and mandated by lenders most commonly, in commercial leases.  

It's more of if it's generally common and accepted, and if there is a regulation against it, to cite that.Could a room off a kitchen count as a bedroom? 

The idea was to rezone the property, put each building onto separate parcels and sell all the properties except the Apartment buildings which we renovated all units and common areas and leased to new tenants for a long term buy and hold multifamily property.

I'm considering turning over the portfolio to a property management firm, but when factoring the commonly used 10% of rental rate they charge, I may be better off hiring a property manager (perhaps on a part time basis at first, if not full time).