How to physically collect money from private investors?

[Tristan Cottarel]

Hi BP,

My brother and I just made our first offer on a property we have been looking at.

Though we have the cash needed, we are also considering bringing in equity investor(s).

Now that we're at this point, we realize we don't know how we would go about actually collecting the money from them. I read that most syndication deals use escrow accounts, but am wondering if this is also typical for smaller deals. If so, how can I set up an escrow account for this purpose? Clearly most financial institutions offer escrow services as part of their mortgage services, but can these institutions also just set up an independent escrow account? I Googled around a bit and everything just directs me to mortgage related information.

If it is relevant, we plan to deed the property to an LLC after closing. We have not yet created this LLC, because its structure would be dependent upon how many partners we have/how much money we raise.

Any insight is appreciated!

[Amy Wan]

Sounds like a syndication to me...