My practice is criminal defense, but anticipating problems I am learning about landlord/tenant law and evictions.Any help is appreciated!

Your redemption laws are much different than ours.

Liability insurance is like paying to defend yourself because the insurance co that is insuring you will be sure to attempt defend you rather then pay out a settlement that they the insurance co must cough up in the event of a law suit like a person falling on the steps.

Like Joel said Section 8 is strict obedience of law so your propertie shold not be a mess but maybe the inspection of your propertie was only in September 2012.

You have essentially no liability (you don't have contracts with anyone, your client does), and you have essentially no risk.In most states, you probably need to have a GC license to legally play this role, but in at least a few, you don't (in many, it's not clear based on how the laws are written).

I guess the other option would be to create my own lease specific to that state/county (if they would even use that), but I am not as familiar with the laws out there and I'm guessing I would have to go through the expense of an attorney to draw one up (?).

So you need to read your states laws.

I have done several of these transactions in Texas successfully but honestly, I am new to this market and know the laws are very different.

It depends on your state laws.

Take your time, it's simply the law of averages at play here.