In such a scenario where the fire is public knowledge, if anything goes wrong with the house and the tenant sues you, you have practically no defense.

Why are you publicly disclosing your assets?).

Don’t ask me how b/c I can’t share this kind of info in the public.

I listen to her on the phone sometimes and the amount of handholding that goes on.. not just from technical aspects IE the general public has very little working knowledge how real estate works.. but just the emotional hand holding.. 

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p537Also, you could have your parents look into doing a 1031 exchange, if they are open to reinvesting their money in another real estate venture (this basically just defers the tax on the gains to a future date, when/if the new property is sold... unless they do a 1031 again, which could allow them to defer the taxes basically forever if done over and over).

The reason I mentioned the above is if you are not thinking of selling Real Estate to the public as your everyday activity I'm not sure if the knowledge gained will be helpful for that. 

But I am burned out on public education and I really don't want to start over in a new school in Ohio, so we're really considering starting real estate investing instead as a way to support our family. 

Unless you're wholetaling, you are generally not selling to the public 

Not to mention the outstanding school ratings (nearly incomparable to the national average for public schooling).

Like it or not, it is very easy to view landlords as the bad guys, and while I completely understand that we all have bills to pay too, the general public does not always give us that benefit of the doubt, and ultimately it is the public's opinion of us that makes our business work or fail.