I'm LaShathan Banks from NOLA/Slidell, La passionate about real estate investing, And I looking forward to learning more. 

Local meetups. https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521Explore Auctions and Foreclosures: Properties in your price range may be available through local auctions or bank foreclosures.Partner with an Investor-Friendly Agent: An agent familiar with BRRRR deals can help you find off-market listings or properties about to hit the MLS.

Can someone recommend any advice on anything (setting up partnership structure, accounting/ setting up a bank account , lending with foreign investors, sourcing deals etc…).

If you have an LLC, ownership percentages are recorded and thus difficult and/or costly to change if an active partner is earning equity through actions.To give some personal experience, Lending and banking can be difficult at best, impossible at worst with a Land Trust.  

They are two different methods and there is a ton of content out there on both.Seller financing - the seller basically becomes the bank.

Whoever taught you that I would go to them and do what they did as this setup for an ownership structure in my opinion is far to complex and your CPA is going to be scratching there head at end of year with all the tax stuff they will have to do and how you have to keep bank accounts for each entity and move money form one to the other to the other....

The most benefit for Real Estate in the US now would be smart contracts to exchange Title,Notes, Funds (stable coins) since the transaction time is super fast compare to our bank system today.

Lastly, plopping down 5% points for a marginal savings on a monthly payment might not be the most effective use of those funds, maybe being able to buy the next a bit quicker would generate a higher return for the cash.and no, I do not believe we will see rates below 5%, and the fed has never had any control over mortgage rates with the fed funds rate as that is the shortest possible rate overnight borrowing between banks.

Once you pay that money back to the bank you cannot access it again.

Also, @Jamie Banks has this stuff down to a science as well.