If you own a Burger joint, and across the street is another burger joint, what would happen if you pay 15% of there rent for them? 

I file jointly with my wife who's a w2 employee.

You can surely buy cheaper properties and obtain the same debt pay-down, but now you've got 5x the head-ache, so right asset class is more about efficiency when it comes to debt pay-down.Tax shielding is similar concept in that more expensive properties directionally give you more building basis to depreciate, which means less net income to tax.

You must decide if you want a short term or long term return.For short term you can access private money to engage in a fix and flip, buy a tax foreclosure and wholetail it, or joint venture with another investor on a value add project.For long term, you can buy a rental property that cash flows, potentially engage in a BRRRR project (although your market will dictate if this is doable based upon barrier of entry), or invest in tax liens. 

The house is registered with my name and my younger brother’s name as joint tenant.

Joint tax return?  

I offer an online payment portal to submit rent payments via ACH or CC - they "couldn't figure out how to use it" so I set us up to accept Zelle payments.

for the promise of cash, especially right around the holidays.It's getting to be that time of year again and I am working on acquiring a triplex, but the owner runs a successful pizza joint and he's got plenty of money.

This strategy allows them to eventually exclude up to 250,000 (500,000 if married filing jointly) of gain from taxes when they sell the property as a primary residence.Hope this helps!

We create a new joint LLC for each investment, and each participant gets listed as an owner of the joint LLC.