New to multi-family - partnering up with my brother - have access to private funders

[Charlie Duquette]

Hello, 

My brother and I, are starting a real estate investing business. He is 38 and I am 30. He has experience in the Southeastern, MA area as he has owned multi-unit property previously. I am a public servant (law enforcement) and military veteran with about a decade of experience in the public sector. We come from humble beginnings, and have always wanted to invest in real estate together. We are currently having our LLC formed, business plan drafted, etc. As naive or crazy as this sounds, given my background, location and networking, we have access to extremely high net worth individuals who we have personal relationships with (friends, associates, etc.) Some of these individuals did mention they may be interested in funding if the numbers and deals make sense.

Our plan is to form the business, pitch our plan to potential investors and seek their funding. My brother and I will do all of the "heavy lifting." We have a retained business and real estate attorney, who I have worked with through my current small business that I own. My brother and I, figured that if we can't secure other people's funding, we could put our coconuts together and start smaller with a 4-8 unit building on our own and go from there. My brother has previously owned and rented a 13 unit building for several years. 

I'd say the point of this post is to see if others have experience in semi-similar scenarios. As much research as I have done, and people I have talked to, I have been told if we don't try and put in the time and market ourselves, then we will never have the chance to succeed. Some have told us we are crazy thinking wealthy investors will just hand over their money. Obviously that is not what we are expecting, but we do have access to pitch our plan and business to these individuals.