Questions About Joint Venture Deal

[Steve A.]

Hi!

So I am in a rather unique situation where I made quite a bit of money suddenly and thus cannot obtain financing for investment properties, since it's based on the DTI from my W2, which I have already maxed out.

One of my business partners would like to do a real estate joint venture with me. My proposal was this: we buy properties using his DTI capacity (which should be enormous as he makes alot of money) and in exchange he gets to write off all of the depreciation from the property, because, as I understand it, only one person gets to write this off anyway.

I use a property manager for my current rentals and I plan to keep them for this venture. However, I am quickly learning that rental real estate still isn't quite passive even with this.

The plan is to purchase one small multifamily building (duplex, triplex or fourplex) per month with 25% down.

I am worried that I may not be seeing the long term repercussions of letting one person write off all of the depreciation. Does this seem like a good deal for me to you veterans or should I try to work out a different arrangement? Without my partner, property accumulation will slow from 1 every month to 1 every 6 months or more. I actually quit my desk job, both since it was killing me, and to do real estate acquisition full time. So the prospect of sitting on my butt for 6 months is not appealing, since I haven't quite "made it."

If we plan to transfer the properties into an LLC using a warranty deed, is this going to create issues as far as having one person write off the depreciation as well?

Thanks