Or should I pursue legal action and try taking them to court after the move out to get the last months rent?

I also do contract for deed, low closing costs but I strongly suggest you close a CFD at an attorneys office (gives feeling of official and legal,,, which it is).Have a written contract for performance, quartlerly inspections and penalties if no work or poor quality.The summary is:  these rarely work out. 

If you're not an LLC and can represent yourself in court so it's not a huge legal expense just to try it, why not?

Who owns the washer and what are your legal responsibilities regarding it?

@Dan DeppenThe reasoning for the heavy handed regulation of consumer products and services is that consumers are not on equal footing with businesses as to experience, knowledge and expertise, may not have access to legal advice, are unsophisticated, and therefore in need of governmental consumer protection.

(It will sell, for sure, if priced correctly.)Of  course I would be doing everything legally to protect my license, etc. 

Sometime/some places the insurer will approve the claim, as they don't want to be held responsible by the next owner insurance for roof claims (there is a legal term for that, my roofer told me about all this), so it's worth to look further into this approach.

We are currently finishing converting our unfinished basement into a legal unit.

And you're going to very clearly imply that they should be grateful about it, because after all, increasing these people's "financial literacy" and their "economic stability" is a good thing.This is going to happen in Georgia, a state where your great-grandfather would have had the legal right to buy their great-grandmother and do whatever he wanted to her, your grandfather might very probably have been able to get away with murdering their grandfather with a knife or a rope as long as he had some good friends with him and a sheet over his head, and your father would have had a chance to live in a neighborhood which allowed him to borrow money to buy a house while their father lived in a neighborhood where a mortgage could be refused due to an arbitrary red line on a map.I do not believe this is going to go over well.

In California cities without a rent control ordinance, the rent can legally be increased to any amount once the lease has expired and continues on a month-to-month basis.