Working with private money investors

[Erin Bryant]

Hi everyone!  Have done a few flips and wholesale deals on my own, using some of my own funds in addition to hard money financing. 

I have relationships with a couple private money investors who are interested in partnering with me to do some flips. Between the both of them, there is enough capital to buy and rehab without the use of traditional hard money. One would just like a decent return on his investment, perhaps as a percentage, and the other is looking for a more involved partnership where we would split profits. One has roughly $80k, the other around $250k, to invest, liquid capital and not contained in an IRA or 401k.

So my question for the group...how are you structuring these types of deals? I already have an LLC that I run all my business through. Would I need to setup some type of additional LLC or LLP? Are you having your real estate attorneys do all the documentation for mortgage/lien purposes?

Any additional info or resources you can point me to?  I’m located in South Florida if that helps. 

[Greg Dickerson]

Hi Erin,

My advice would be to keep your private lenders as just that. Do not partner unless you absolutely have to. If you do decided to partner I would only partner on specific deals and not a business. You want to be able to do other deals if your lender partner maxes out.

I always use a note and deed of trust for private lenders just like a mortgage company or bank. I do not partner up in an LLC with investors for flips. This can get messy and really no reason to do that.

But if that's what you're after then you should have an attorney form an LLC with a very clear operating and partnership agreement that spells out your roles and responsibilities and contemplates all the things that can go wrong and how to handle things.