Luckily it only left minor damage but because it was raining so hard water had absorbed into the drywall ceiling of the tenants living room.

I also have this sentence:  In addition to forfeiture of earnest money to Seller or return of earnest money to Buyer, Buyer and Seller shall both have the option of enforcing specific performance of this contract or any other remedy allowed by law or equity.Does this mean that I can still be forced to buy or pay other damages after forfeiting my earnest money if the deal falls through?

Consider the liabilities that you are accepting as his employer..... driving around while on the clock, drunk, hits somebody...... gets hurt on the job, giant increase in WC premium for a long, long, long time...... damages products or materials during installation, guess who gets to pay for them and can't deduct them legally from his pay check...... you run out of work, he collects unemployment...These may be worst case situations, but they still exist and lets not forget incentives to being productive... hourly employees have little financial incentive to being productive, it basically comes down to a combination of a mixture fear of losing a job, how much they can get away with and of course their work ethic.What all this means is that unless there is huge gain for you somewhere beyond just a couple of thousand dollars over a year there is no way you will offset these issues, there would need to be some very large gains, possibly non-financial to warrant hiring this guy versus paying him as a 1099.

Some folks even pay to have the sewer scoped for root or damage issues. 

It cost me $6000 in damages in one property and a $6000 judgement in another that is being paid off at $200 /month.

I imagine that it would remove the paint without damaging the brick.

I did this because  I had a vacant house with burst pipes and the damage was over $22,000 so now water is off in vacant houses.

A large portion of foreclosures are failed short sales (the bank taking a loss) In that case, the loan amount exceeds the value of the home and that's before all the appliances are ripped out or any other damage is done.

I personally wouldn't want to attract college students because of the turnover and potential damage.

All suggestions were very good, i would NEVER tell a tenant I'm going on vacation if I'm in your scenario living in a triplex with tenants paying your loan, more often then not, they will act up and get to relaxed and not pay rent or worse yet, damage the place.