RE Investment Corporation Structure [CANADA]

[Daniel B.]

Hi all, my partner and I currently own 3 properties, and are about to close on our 4th in a few months. We want to keep purchasing more properties, but have run out of the capital we need for down payments. Luckily we have friends and family who are interested in investing through us, but we're a bit stuck trying to sort out the best way to structure our investment vehicle.

We've talked to a lawyer and an accountant and the general advice seems to be to incorporate in Canada, and issue shares to investors, however we're not sure what kind of share structure to go with (how many different classes of shares, whether we should issue voting shares as well or just non-voting shares, in what form investors will see returns, etc). 

We're currently looking for a new lawyer (open to recommendations in the GTA), but were hoping to get some tips from anyone who's done something similar on here perhaps. The plan is to incorporate in the next month or so and have the 4th property mentioned earlier under the corporations name, and then use investment money to buy as many more properties as the friends and family money allows before branching out to bigger investors.