@Carlos Cevallos  In the upstate in SC, where I am focused, tenants pay electricity directly and water, sewer, trash, and pest control can be billed back to tenants either through a RUBS system or a flat-fee bill, which a lot of landlords are moving to because it's easy for the tenants to understand and you don't have to wait for the RUBS service to calculate the payments or pay their fees.We found that billing through RUBS, especially for water, has the positive effect not only of raising your NOI, but also it encourages tenants to be more economical with water in the first place, now that they have to pay for it.

This is going to be the easiest way for him to be out from under the treachers of landlording, and this would be the easiest way for you to essentially assume his loan, and have control of the house. 

It's hard to give up control to management after working so hard!

gluing hardwoods down is the best option and controls noise, movement, water penetration far better then nail and floating options. the trade off is it takes 3x longer to install. so it really just matters what you goal is and what your willing to do or spend to get there.

This gives them full control of the loan parameters.

My issue with the latter is that the heat is controlled by the upstairs unit, so that doesn't seem fair to the lower tenant. 

I was actually queried by the IRS and because I am very careful about not touching those funds directly (I don't have SDIRA LLC or checkbook control like some SDIRA companies are pushing), I cleared their query easily.

I don't plan on selling any but even if I sold 1-2 I would still control the HOA.   

The seller would likely  have to foreclose to get control of the property back if the buyer did not perform and that money would be out of pocket and not in the 10% down.Another option is the buyer puts down 15%, the bank loans 75%, and the seller takes back a 10% second.

BUT if you live somewhere w/out rent control you could do this QUITE easily, but those are the numbers I use to see if properties 'work'.