As of now, we pay our kids to collect the rent each month.

One of their tenants was one of their maintenance guys but was not their manager (making sure rent was collected), I think he paid either half of what rent should've been for his unit while the unit next to him was a 1bd unit as well renting for $650/700 at the time and that was about market rent still.

What MAY make sense is to setup a Master LLC that operates like a PMC and collects all your rents, pays all your property-related expenses, etc.The owner of each property (you, LLC, trust, IRA, ect.) would have to execute a management contract with the Master LLC, so the Master LLC could legally act on behalf of the property owner(s).Check with Account Closed read our 

You do not use the $900 in fees you collected.

They got a large judgment against the people running the scam but can they collect against it?

What MAY make sense is to setup a Master LLC that operates like a PMC and collects all your rents, pays all your property-related expenses, etc. 

He's a barracuda in sheep's clothing.

He's someone I already knew, and he does the work for a small rent discount but he's about to move out and I don't think it'll be so easy to find another qualified tenant without losing a month's rent while looking.Before I bought the building, the tenants were all responsible for taking their own cans to the road and they were collectively responsible for keeping the area clean, but they didn't (and I didn't know they didn't.) 

@Nathan GesnerCan a landlord report a tenant to collections on their own?...

If you use Buildium to collect rent, you need to enter that information into QuickBooks.