A partnership is fine at the start, However, You will really need to call the Texas Secretary of State and verify for yourself, Do not gamble on the Info you get on the internet,  Secondly, You need to safe guard your personal assets, Meaning you need to be at least an LLC, just in case things do not work out, If you are an LLC, and you have financial problems at any point, The LLC will protect you. 

Without that you really have no idea what the tenant is like, so its a big gamble. 

How about stock market or Vegas gambling, any language on that?

It also seems like there are 6+ month waiting lists to get into modern, resort style apartments around here so tenants may be out of luck if they take a gamble leaving, which i think is playing in us (Landlord's favor) as of now as they don't have as much bargaining power.

In my mind $8k is more money than I'm willing to gamble with and the course felt like too much of a gamble (let's put it this way..

I have always thought that was a gamble not worth taking, and it is even more risky in this time of rising interest rates. 

Yes things do fall out of the sky and no matter how much attention you pay to detail Murphy is bound to be around one day - so protect against that instead of gambling (*like some share investors do) 

It was a bit of a gamble up front because I paid for it myself entirely while pretty much all of my classmates had tuition reimbursement through their employers (for instance, a few of my classmates worked for Disney,  who pay their full-time employees 75% of their education costs.

To gamble on appreciation like many are doing in Dallas here now.

It is the myths of a deeply misguided society that spends its time keeping up with the Kardashians and spends billions of dollars a year on online gambling that tells us there is such a thing as life happiness and contentment, and my personal favorite, becoming "a success."