You should also protect yourself with plenty of homeowner's insurance coverage and possibly putting the house in an LLC/trust.

A real estate trust will create a veil of anonymity to protect my real estate investment.

Conscious decision, timing was important, price reflected generous buffer for known needed work.What I didn't realize is, the tenants are kind of irresponsible slobs, and rather than reporting things to me or applying a _proper_ fix, they'll do a hack fix (e.g. they tied a piece of cloth around a pinhole leak in a pipe, which resulted in expensive water damage years down the line).I've run into a such few cases, where repairs were needed due to long-term tenant negligence (when they rented from the previous owner, so basically before our lease), and I'd like to protect myself and hold them accountable for any future such things that come up.

However, in this case it would make it to the probable category as the rental property itself most likely falls into to the non-exempt category of assets protected by Texas aw  

@Taron Wright Sounds like the agent you are working with is already putting work in for you so he is doing what he can to protect himself if he is going to invest his time to help you clients. 

I haven't talked to an attorney yet, but how safe is it to protect the property in the worst case?

Most investors who buy rental properties put the title in an LLC to protect themselves. 

If you only have one rental property it doesn’t make sense to do an s-Corp. if you have multiple you can have the s-Corp own the llc or llcs for added protection. S

In May of 2019 I created 2 LLC's for asset protection for my properties in Chicago.

The city website states the RT4 district is to promote, preserve and protect neighborhoods intended primarily for 2-family dwellings while also permitting a mixture of single-family dwellings and small multi-family dwellings of 3 or 4 unit.