Funding from mom, opportunity or nightmare?

[Ian Korpel]

Hello BP. I am looking to get into multi-family rentals and may have stumbled across an opportunity (or liability). My original plan was to purchase single family properties for a few years and use the rental income to save towards a multi-family, then sell the single-families. Ideally, I would have a complex with a dozen or so units in 5-10 years. My thoughts here are that a multi-unit building would allow me the capacity to hire a property manager and minimize my workload with multiple single-family units.

Now, I was chatting about this with my family and my mother said she is very interested in investing. Obviously, I am cautious of this since I hear a lot of horror stories, so I would have a legal contract written. My question for the community is if this is something worth pursuing? In my mind, I think it would be foolish to turn down cash aid which would allow me to "skip some steps" of finding single family home deals, and I could jump to the multi-family plan, though perhaps at 4-6 units instead of a dozen to start with.

The way I see it there are two approaches. I could write her in as a business partner for this one property and provide income payments to her as a silent investor at some type of split (45-55) or something like that. Or, I could take a loan from her, and pay her back interest plus principle over 3 years or so, which would leave full ownership of the company to me after that time. 

Now, full transparency, I do not yet own any investment properties. I was buying a year ago but had to postpone due to a baby coming into the picture and had to be (understandably) conservative with my savings. That is another reason I am interested in a multi-family with a management company (if the numbers work of course). 

So, I ask the community. Feel free to be fully honest with me! I am obviously new at this and you won't hurt my feelings!

Best, 

Ian