Partnership Agreements - What Would You Do if You Were Me?

[Michael Jake Higgins]

BP Friends,

I need your help thinking big and wanted to ask for your opinion if you don't mind giving it.

Doubling my cash with a partner(s) allows me to enter bigger multi family home spaces. Why buy small and consolidate with 1031Es down-the-road if I can start bigger to begin with and keep my property count down and unit count up?  The problem is that I have always viewed partnership as an added legal and logistical complexity I do not want to utilize in my first deal or two.  I assumed I would have so much going on anyway fighting the learning curve myself, it would be harder (type A/stubborn).  Now, I have people in my growing circle offering to partner with their money and the opportunity to enter bigger models quicker in my journey has me thinking.

I have told these potential partners I would need to see a partnership agreement drafted of some type which dictated how our money collaborates together on our first deal and our investment portfolio in total. Is every dollar of payments, repairs, costs split equally across partners for perpetuity? Are any partners allowed to pull money out of the portfolio at any time or must all funds be deposited back into the business to keep growing the purchases quicker? These are things I planned to do when going lone wolf and I want to understand how people approach these agreements when teaming-up and what needed structure via contracts maybe our needed to make them work properly.

What did you do when starting with partners?

Thank You,

Jake