Buying a property with multiple co-investors

[Alex Kessler]

Some friends and I (all young guys) are interested in getting into real estate investing. We’re targeting college town single family properties to start out. Its early stages, but I’m unofficial team lead on this potential venture. I’m doing research on local ordinances in our two target markets, as well as getting a sense for property values and rental rates. Not worried on those fronts. I’d love some advice on structuring and financing however.

Structure: seems best way to go is to create property-holding LLC's either at per-property or state-wide level (two markets are in different states). Any advice between these two options is appreciated.

Financing: let's say there are four of us. Good credit scores, enough cash for 20% down. Can we attain a mortgage across the four of us, or through the property-level LLC? Most of our parents are 60's with some assets, so we also may be able to get someone's dad to buy outright then write a mortgage to our investing entity. MAY is the keyword there.

I've worked in CRE but am new to this angle of real estate investing. Any advice or feedback is appreciated. Thank you.