Buying Real Estate with Friends 8+

[Chanel Alexander]

Hello All! 

Hopefully someone can help me with this.  I have gathered a group of my close friends (about 10 people so far) and we are pooling our money togehter in order to make a real estate investment. Ideally the money we pool together will serve as the downpayment on a Multi-Family property and we would finance the rest.  Does anyone have experience doing this kind of arangement? How do people usually finance as banks are keen on lending to multiple individuals. 

Also, If this group is going to be an ongoing concern does it make sense to turn this into a LLC or REIT and not just a partnerhsip.

I would love to hear any thoughts. 

The group is split betwen NY and NJ (for reference)