Finding MF deals to invest passively without paying "club" fees

[Ashley Wolfe]

Hello,

I'm a basic member of Lifestyles Unlimited here in DFW.  We are comfortable right now with our membership level because it gains us access to the basic education, forms/paperwork for SF, vendor lists, discounts, monthly training and events.  The only way to invest passively in the MF deals through LU is to pay the $20K Preferred Investor Group fee.  After that, then we would pay the amount we are willing to pay to invest passively in a MF deal led by another member.

My husband and I are wondering if there are other ways that we could invest passively in a MF deal without having to fork over $20K that we'll never see again. That's a lot of money. We could put part of a down payment on our own SFH or Duplex and see returns on it if the numbers work out and we play our cards right. My husband keeps saying, "I'm not going to pay someone $20K to be a part of their little club." I tend to agree that this money, at best, gets us into a group of people that are investing and then, in order to get some ROI, we have to invest more money.

I'm very comfortable with the idea of SFH landlording and I've been trying to get our first SFH deal since December. We came within days of closing on the last deal and it fell through at the end of February. I'm still working on it though. So that is still a part of the plan.

If you have any thoughts on MF investing without having to pay into a group, let me know what you think. Maybe I'm making the idea of MF investing harder than it actually is or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and need some SFH deals under my belt before the MF. I do like the idea of passively investing in a MF deal to build some capital in RE that I could 1031 back into the next deal after the MF unit is sold or refinanced.

Thanks for your time and suggestions.