As long as you and your tenants have an oral agreement, you have an enforceable lease.

Cash is totally the way to go and all future real estate purchases are going to be mostly or all cash.

Which rental property management companies would you recommend as trustworthy and easy to work with/communicate with? 

Good communication skill is super important for a PM since he's like the bridge to all kinds of people.

For example, you could offer the tenants the opportunity to forfeit the deposit and walk away which limits their losses to the security deposit. if you take two months to find a new tenant, they are obligated to pay two months worth of rent and their losses will be significantly higher.Personally, I would cut off all communication and maintain the lease agreement until a replacement tenant is found.

Coz it seems your tenant is hard to communicate with.

While you're living in one of the units you'll have the benefit of others paying a portion or all of your note. 

Just the logistics of communication and decision making alone are a struggle.

But there's other initial time expenditures such as getting the listing up and running, etc.After that, you'll have a little bit of a learning curve while you figure out the most efficient ways to communicate with the guests, but once you hit a pattern with that, there are tools you can begin using to automate the repetitive parts (and after awhile, a lot of it gets repetitive!).  

I am currently in communication with a 75 yr old gentleman who has an off market 4 unit for sale in upstate NY.