Starting real estate investing company and need advice!

[Andrew Bumstead]

Hi All,

I'm new here but this looks like an awesome community.  I'll lay out my situation and you all can pile on with the advice.  

1) I'm a building contractor in Oregon. I do primarily new construction but will do the odd addition or small remodel.  I'm competent in most areas of residential construction (electrical the glaring exception) and am an expert in a few (framing, siding).  My attempt at real estate investing was building a house intending to live in it for two years and then flip it.  I did that in 2007 :(.... Didn't turn out well.  Since then I bought a fixer and did a total remodel. I now live in it and have 100k in equity.  I've been planning on trying another investment soon but have limited cash on hand 10-20k and a low credit score (until last year, new construction wasn't doing very well and my income reflects that). 

2)My family (Parents and Siblings) live overseas.  They own several properties here that they rent out.  They also own a building lot and have 150-200k that they are looking to invest somewhere.  

3) We've been talking about partnering together (3 or 4 parties total) on some investments. Initially these would be build and sell or fix and sell projects.  I would find the deals and oversee the construction/renovation.  They would provide the majority of the funding.  down the road it is possible that we would want to hold some properties for longer term investments.

My questions are:
1) How should I set up the business? Should each project be approached individually with a proposal to the investors to see which parties want to be involved with conditions specific to that deal? Would I then want to LLC each project? Even if we were planning to sell it quickly?
    Or do we set up an LLC with ownership divided according to investment and it handles all the projects?  
2) Can a property that is owned by an LLC be used in a 1031 exchange?
3) I will be charging my market rate for any construction/repairs that my crew does on these projects.  What should I be charging for putting the deal together, being the man on the ground here?
4) Are there major areas of concern that you see that I am missing (Besides the "don't do business with family shtick")?