Advice for Starting Real Estate Investing

[Christopher Cline]

Hola Bigger Pockets Community!

I wanted to see if I could get some advice from people that have been through the trenches. 

Brief Summary: My wife and I have been very interested in getting into real estate investing. My brother-n-law and his wife also are very interested. After talking for the couple weeks, we decided that we want to give it a shot all together. We feel we will make a good team: I'm in project management for a general contractor; brother-n-law is a superintendent for a general contractor; sister-n-law is a real estate agent; and my wife is a photographer/marketer. We are planning investing in the Southern Oregon market. Our initial main interested is rehabbing to flip. Our goal is to purchase, rehab, and flip one home in 2018.

Questions / Concerns: 

1. Trying to do a little homework has further confused me on a few topics. First, we all plan to play active roles in the process and at first it seem to be a no brainer to create an LLC; however, the financing seems to be an issue due to the initial lack of assets obtained by the company. None of us have a ton of assets to begin with, but I figure our incomes will help us qualify for a loan. I just wasn't sure if an LLC is created, can you utilize your personal income for a loan amongst 2 married couples? Does anyone have any advise as the first move we should make on our first flip?

2. What is the most appropriate way to finance a house when 2 couples are partnered? Should utilize a bank, or seek out a private lender?

I'm just trying to put some pieces together to better understand how we want to operate. Thanks in advance for anyone that decides to help by submitting a response!!

Chris Cline

[Grant Shipman]

Due to the nature of fix & flips this might be a very hard question to weight in on.  There are surely good answers for you, but it depends a lot on your time frames among other things.  Maybe someone else can chime in.  Stick with it- it's a great goal!