How To Structure A Group of Investors

[Jason K.]

These seems to be a common unanswered topic.  Here is my specific situation:  I have about 20 years of successful investing experience in both flips and buy and hold. As a result, I have many friends/ family/ business contacts that would be willing, and often ask, to get involved.  Many are new to investing so a flat out partnership is not that attractive to me with any 1 of them as I don't really need the money to fund simple deals.

However, I am considering amping up my investing and buying a larger project or several at one time.  Since this requires more money, I have about 10 people committed to put up 100k (1 mil total), to invest in 1 large or several small projects (goal is mostly to build a collection of rental properties).  Myself and 1 other partner would be the managing partners and the rest silent "money" partners, however they want to be in the know and involved, but no real decision making abilities and too many cooks in the kitchen slows things down. 

The question" How do I legally/ financially structure this ? I assume an LLP in the best, but not sure. I know there are more investment focused ways like creating a real estate investment fund.

Also, how are these investors paid ?  Guaranteed annual return and then piece of the returns.  Maybe I just make them all money lenders and pay interest ?  Although, many want to get involved because they want to learn investing, not just invest. 

Clearly my ultimate plan will be to hire an attorney to create this structure, so if anyone know of any that specialize in this (preferably in NY/ NJ/ Phila metro area), let me know. 

[Todd Dexheimer]

Start with this article: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/10145/72118-sy...

I will be posting another one on syndication soon as well.

Anytime that you use someone else's money and they are not directly a decision maker and doing the "day to day," you need to consider a syndication. Just because they are your brother, sister or some other relative or close friend or that it is a small group under 5, doesn't mean you don't need to do a securities offering (these are common misconceptions). 

I would scour biggerpockets, podcasts, books (It's a Whole New Business, by Gene Trowbridge), youtube, etc and learn about syndication's and how to do them. Messing up on the first one, could mean it's your last one. 

Be sure to find a good Securities Attorney. There are a few active on Biggerpockets and likely a few where you are located.