Buying one is incredibly difficult.  I

You want to help companies make financial decisions based on risk, well they are going to want you to have a lot of skin in the game to do that.

I think one thing to remember is that whenever you do something new there's always difficulties as you're doing everything for the first time - so it's probably slow, painful, and not efficient. 

@James Wierzba cash flow in a hot area like Seattle will be extremely difficult. I

I agree with you that finding a property with those specs will be difficult. I

My acquaintances had dealings with them, and they say that there were some difficulties with them.

This can affect the feasibility of collateralizing your hard money loan, and the refi (you might need two, or three, loans instead of one, which not only increases the difficulty of getting the refi(s) through underwriting, but could mean 2-3 sets of origination and closing costs).

At first, it would be for smaller commercial properties, but if the relationship grows well and we make a good team, I'd love to scale up with them.Ideally it's a win-win for all:For the PM:They get a large chunk of equityThey get more business.They get access to my investors' capital for potentially future dealsIn a way, they eat what they killFor me:I look favorable to the lender with an experienced PM team as a partnerI'll get a deal under my beltI'll be able to get help with the downpayment, reducing the burden on my investors and myselfFor my investorsSure, they lose out on some equity, but they'll get a (slightly) higher return due to the lower monthly management feeThey'll sleep easy knowing that the PM has skin in the game and is experiencedTo be clear, I'm playing the long game, so I'm more than willing to do say, a 55/30/15 split with the PM/Investors/Myself and with a 3-5% monthly management fee.

He agreed but since he was busy on the job we didn't really have time to discuss it further.So of course, one option would be for me to just be his private money guy and structure it as a debt deal, but I'd really rather get a little more skin in the game and partner with him. 

@Eric Patrick Oden, that approach works however the difficulty lies in selling 30 POH for $10,000 cash (or even $5,000) to potential tenants in a reasonable amount of time.