Looking at partnering with my dad

[Scott Rosslow]

I have been looking for a while for some buy and hold small multifamily units. I grew up helping my dad fix and taking care of rental properties. His strategy was different than the approach I want to take. He bought everything in cash and never carries debt. I want to leverage where I can. 

I recently came across 2 4-plex buildings next door to each other that have value add potential that are listed 1 million (price seems absurd) total in Palm Beach County. The current rents are a little over half what appears for the area. Using the current rents to justify a purchase price my offer would be 415k roughly. I am still working on the renovation costs but they would be somwhere 40-100k (I know its a wide range, and I need more detail, I havent seen the units yet).

My question is this: I have always wanted to use my dad for at least a partial financing (smaller financing for down payments + conventional financing). I think my dad more or less wants to partner and form a LLC so that I can review deals with him and then go make cash offers. Should I partner, buy, renovate, rent, and refinance attempting to make him whole? Is an LLC the right choice? As a newbie investor I wanted to get something <200k which I qualify easily for financing so I could learn somethings and scale it out from there. I haven't really been educating myself on the partnership/private funding side of things at this point.