My lease states that written permission needs to be given, so there is no "he said, she said" in small claims court.3)  That's going to be another tough row to hoe unless you have a sales receipt. 

Listening to that podcast regularly will give you a great grasp of what multi family investors around the country are experiencing. 

@Salvatore Giancolai had this kind of behavior lately with my tenants, in other country (not U.S), but you need to be very clear like you did with the letter and very creative if you can speak with them over the phone or with your Lawer and do some tricks that can cause them to go out, by the law of course.Every one can agree with me that no one wants to be “marked” , because rent payment.Your credit score damage and a lot of other things.For both of them if they won’t be pay this , it will be almost impossible to find a place to rent.This is how i solved it in my country.And try to find more “regular” tenants next time..After i signed a contract with single mother with 4 kids that didnt open the door for me for more then mouth and did so much damage to the apartment ..I learned the best lesson in the world.Hope you will be fine , remember from every situation with tenants we learn something new.

@Ernesto CorreaYou do realize you’d have to first claim the rent as income on your taxes, right?

There is a REIG group here that meets regularly.

And if he still isn’t satisfied, the appropriate remedy is usually small claims court. 

So I'm thinking he's going to claim the contract date of August 31,  as the end of the contract  and go on to his cash buyers. 

Thanks to them, I am able to put a $65k offer on what would normally be a $250k home (my market is still a buyer's market so homes normally sit 75+ days on the market) and there's only a handful of investors in my area so I don't really have that much competition since regular people won't touch it.

Right now, we have 5 of 2yr recycle dumpsters in the trash room (2 additional ones for regular trash).

In our state of Illinois, you would have to go through the small claims process and get a judgment against the tenant.