New Partnership Questions

[Peter Hynes]

Hi folks,

Newbie here...

My brother and I are ready to buy our first property together (i.e. we've been preapproved with a lender, have a real estate agent looking for properties for us, etc.) with the hope of owning about 10 properties eventually.

We're still unclear as to how to structure our partnership.  

Our first goal is to simply buy our first property together, with each 50% on the downpayment, the deed, the mortgage. As such we don't see the need to start an LLC or incorporate since we're just getting started and seeing if we even like doing this together.

Assuming we do want to buy more properties together...

- If we buy 4 properties together, then we'll hit our max of 4 easy loans immediately.  Or we can alternate ownership where I buy the first one 100%, he buys the second one 100%, etc., so that we can get 8 loans before having to look at commercial.  Is this how its usually done?

- We're unclear on how it works on the backend.  My brother and I are 10 years apart in age.  Let's say in 10 years he wants to start taking income from our portfolio but I don't need to take income until 10 years after that.  How do you handle that from an equity perspective and keeping everything "fair"?

Thanks.