Investing in multi-family apartment as joint venture, advice on how to structure

[Nikki Cepeda]

Thus far, we've been investors purchasing our own properties but we have an opportunity in that a family member is open to selling their 30-unit apartment building. It's our largest deal yet and to be able to pay in we may need to sell 3 of our rental properties to do so. The other factor is that this is a family deal being split among siblings. 

Our contribution makes us the primary shareholder but as this is a multiple-partner deal which we don't have much experience with, we're very open to any and all advice. What we've heard to this point is that mixing real estate and family is often not a great idea unless the agreement in place is very very clear and ideally one person still retains 100% control while the others are passive investors only. 

Approaching it like syndication was also mentioned with us as the GP and others as LP. Is there advice or past experiences with JVing a deal and how best to structure the agreement?