Buying house from neighbor without a real estate agent

[Dominic Nguyen]

I was approached by my neighbor if I wanted to purchase their house since they plan to move in the next three months for new job opportunities. It will be an off market deal. To save on fees for both parties, we are planning to handle the transaction ourselves. I plan to form a partnership with three other friends for this deal. 

1. When should I form this partnship and open a business bank account to pool capital?

2. What documents should we be prepared to fill out?

3. Should we work with a lawyer?

4. I assume we should get the property appraised? How else can we get the property valued correctly?

5. Should we remove the real estate agents from this transaction?

The most important question is should we do this at all?