My goals are to build a supplemental retirement income for my husband and I (we are a little bit behind) and to build an income producing career for myself so that my husband can pursue an alternative career and leave his $140000 yr job without much of a change in living standards.

. :)Why not just stay with the initial purchase and take care of her risk adverse nature, providing her guarantees, she probably wants a sweater deal to accept her perceived risk.

(I believe once son's maxed out insurance he'd be eligible for medicaid & section 8 to pay rent on unit) Then use IRA to purchase income producing property, to further help?

Action will produce results, but you can't control what the responses will be to your actions.2nd thing...define your niche.  

Naturally I am not feeling comfortable with that condition, as after putting all my hard work, at the end of the day, there is always a possibility of him walking out alone not sharing the profit with me.

I'm sure the details would have to be worked out, but that's where I would start.I disagree that all the "good" agents would leave the market, as I think those that are the best and most efficient would survive, and I think you would see the very low producers leave.To bring in another point that hasn't been discussed, listing agents do far less work (excluding the marketing) than even buyers agents.

I try to steer clear of townhouses/condos since it's attached and can cause complaints from your tenants about something you can't control such as noise and things of that nature.

Will that produce and equity increase of that amount, or more (i.e. will it then appraise out for more)?

its no different than me teaching someone how to trade for a living, no offense but you make it sound like people in general are cynical in nature

My problem with @Bill Gulley's example is the broad stroke of C corps being a bad idea for holding income producing property you never intend to convert to personal use.