We live in a litigious society and those are the unfortunate facts. 

You and your partner need to understand what is going to take (money, effort, financial sacrifices, stress) and need to agree to support each other on that journey together when time comes.

tell them how they could rent a nice house and have 100K in cash in 10 days :)  assuming the murder goes through probate :( Sorry to hear about this, I know how stressful that is.

and I agree with your statement about the value and difficulty with that area, the property conditions and work that needs to go into it is RELATIVELY less stressful (nothing in REI is relaxing) .

Sounds stressful but its not the end of the world so stay positive. 

The key with this is that I know this is the longer play that is less stressful as I allocate my funds to solid property management companies.

It's become a major problem in society and our government is feeding the beast.You should consider signing up for www.petscreening.com and let them handle it.

So-so tenants are very costly (we have found that from experience) both financially and in terms of time commitment and stress.

It's your house and life is too short to stress about something like this.  

I have systems in place to mitigate problems so I don't have to think about it much or stress over it.