Four College Students Gathering Info About Investing

[Gabriel Lopez]

Hi,

I'm a fairly new member to the site, and this is my first time posting, so apologies if this isn't the right section of the forum for this post.  This is basically my/our situation.

We are four college students who are completely debt free with the exception of utilities (phone bills, insurance, gas, food, etc.).  We all own our own cars and live with our parents because of the fact that our university is literally five minutes from our respective homes.  Rather than doing the "normal" thing that college grads do (like buying a car or getting into credit card debt) we have decided that we would like to pool our resources and invest in a multi-family real estate property so that we have a source of income.  We are located in an area of the country that has seen significant growth (30+% over the past ten years) and has a foreclosure rate of ~60% higher than average.  With that said, we feel that we have a great opportunity to invest in Real Estate BUT none of us have our "real jobs" yet.  

I personally am about to begin med-school, and my three friends are about a year-and-a-half from beginning their careers (~$40k - $60k/year before taxes).  What we wish to do is continue saving until we each have $10,000 each to put as a down payment on a multi family property (we're at approximately $5,000 each at the moment).  What we want to do is invest in a property, aid each other in the management, and split any profits/liabilities equally between the four of us.  For example, it would be much easier to pool resources and each make a $200/mo. payment, as opposed to attempting to pay $800/mo. as an individual, assuming we have to take on the entire mortgage/insurance/tax payments because of 100% vacancy.

Now before you say "Don't mix friends/family and finance." We know. However, we've known each other well enough, and are certain enough, that character issues won't be a problem. Arrogant, I know, but the question we have is how can we each contribute an equal amount of the down payment and receive equal amounts of profits/expenses? Is there a way to make a corporation or, for lack of a better term, small scale REIT? Sorry if this was long-winded, but I want to see if I can get any sort of help with my situation. Thanks in advance. Appreciate any help.