It's those maniacs that buy homes cash via quit claim deed off of craigslist that really get screwed.Make sure your property manager is a licensed real estate brokerage.Google Clayton Morris and/or Morris Invest for a cautionary tale of what not to do when buying turnkey real estateUnderstand you can not eliminate all risk, only mitigate it.

It's those maniacs that buy homes cash via quit claim deed off of craigslist that really get screwed.Make sure your property manager is a licensed real estate brokerage.Google Clayton Morris and/or Morris Invest for a cautionary tale of what not to do when buying turnkey real estateUnderstand you can not eliminate all risk, only mitigate it.

So an option to still mitigate those taxes would be to move out of that property for a year or so and turn it into an investment. 

When you have a more solid footing, knowing exactly what you're looking for and what the risk factors and the mitigations for those risk factors, fear can dissipate pretty nicely.

You're taking on an increased risk so you need to mitigate the risk by taking a large down payment, typically 10% - %20.

not sure what the backstory for failing to publish is but unless the excuse is out of this world I can almost assure you there more to the long delay...I've managed thousands of thousands of notes on a micro level, I mean due diligence of acquisitions to foreclosure, loss mitigation , auction sales and everything in between. 

Maybe from a builders association or rental association, or just individual landlords as interested parties joining together as a formal cooperative to manage their properties, provide shared resources, screen tenants and mitigate issues among other things?

Accounting, Risk Mitigation, Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Web Design... you get the picture.A lot of those things can be outsourced but you still need to know enough about them to make hiring and project management decisions.If you're entrepreneurial and a confident salesman (or quick study) then I'd say absolutely consider it.

I'll ask for a larger deposit to mitigate some of the risk.

Depends heavily on the goals of the parents and kids, what the estate of the parents looks like, and the age and life expectancy of the parents.The path forward should weigh the holistic situation and everyone's goals.I'm a proponent of not gifting large amounts of capital directly to children unless the estate is large and gifting is part of the overall estate tax mitigation strategy.