3 Brothers - First Time Homebuyer Strategy

[Blaine Gobler]

Hello Everyone, new member here trying to get some information and explore options! 

My two brothers and I are all first time home buyers looking to buy a primary residence together with the plan of turning it into a rental property in 3-5 years and buying another property. This would allow us to continue saving money (more than if we bought separately) and get into this market while our home hopefully appreciates with inflation. 

A few questions we have:

1) Should we all be on the loan or should we try and leave one of us off it in case we need lease the property in order to buy a future property? My brothers are younger and would most likely continue to live in the property a little longer than me. By leasing to one of them after 3 years I would be able to show that to the bank and it would improve my debt to income ratio.

2)  The market is obviously crazy, especially in Portland, OR and suburbs surrounding so we don't believe we will get a great deal right now. It may not be a good rental on paper today, even though we are living in it, but I want to somehow evaluate if it will be a good rental in the future. Is there anyway to do this? Or should our main concern be just getting into the market and reevaluating in 5 years if we want to sell or rent it out.

3) We are inexperienced and looking for ways we can leverage having 3 buyers to set ourselves up for the future. If anyone has experience from a similar situation and has some beneficial pieces of advice that we wouldn't be aware of please share. 

Our goal is to become financially independent and believe Real Estate will ultimately help us but we want to make good informed decisions. 

Thank you for your help!