Strategies for buying rental property w/ a partner?

[Brian Kantor]

Hi there. 

Long-story short, when researching neighborhoods in an out-of-state market, I rekindled with an old college buddy who lives in the market I'm looking to invest. After chatting with me, he asked if I'd be interested in partnering with him on this deal and others in the future. I trust this guy, he has amazing access to contractors and vendors (from his previous career) and ideally would like to make this happen, but we would want to structure in a way that is constructive and prevents potential future issues from arising.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to structure?

Specific questions:

1. Would we need to create an LLC to do this? Or is there a better/other way? In Pennsylvania (our market), all loans given to LLC must be structured as a commercial loan vs investor loan (as I understand it). Does that make this problematic?
2. We're both on same page strategically (ie, buy-and-hold, interested in cap-rate and focused on rental revenue vs trying to flip), but any suggestions on how to structure what happens when "a great deal" is presented to us to buy one of our properties?
3. How best to decide on major CapEx expenses (ie, vinyl windows that may last 20 years but are cheap vs aluminum that may last 50 but are expensive)
4. How best to handle what happens if/when one of us wants out of this in the future for some unforeseen reason?
5. How best to handle if/when one of us dies?

Assuming I can check off the above boxes, I guess we could have a lawyer (or LegalZoom) draft the framework into an agreement that we'd both sign.

Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Brian