Newbie in Illinois comes bearing a question.

[Wayne Popelka]

Hey Everybody, 

I've spent a good deal of time lurking over the past month and I thought I'd step up and finally say hello. I'm Wayne. I've thought about getting a rental property as a next step in life for a couple of years now. I didn't really have much of an idea beyond that; it just seemed like I was at point in my life where I was supposed to be taking some sort of step towards increasing my assets. A question on Quora about rental investing coaxed me to read RDPD, and it really got me to rethink my approach to money. So - pretty much the same story most folks share here. We're HELOC'ed and loaded and waiting for something appealing to fall into our laps.

I've been spending a good deal of time with the threads, books, podcasts, webinars, and then my spreadsheets to make sure I'm understanding how to analyze properties for cashflow. I think the logic behind all of it pretty fascinating and I find myself coming up with all sorts of hypotheticals I want to throw out into the world, and thought I'd start here. 

When I started talking to my wife about this, one of the things that occurred to us was that she might get her broker's license. We thought this would be a good way for her to participate and that it'd help her learn the space. Then the idea of her representing me on a purchase we might want to make crossed our mind, could that be a way for us to get a little 3% kickback at the closing? What if I also got my license? Could we swap roles the next time and guarantee that any time either of us bought a property from a seller using an agent that we'd ensure ourselves a kickback? Seems to good too be true. Any thoughts on it?