It is also great that your wife is into real estate investing.Y'all ought to form some sort of corporation or an LLC after you get some professional help from a CPA and\or an Attorney.  

She's at an outpatient mega corporation, but she just started a year ago, so she may not know what it was like before. 

If you do a flip, use an S-corp or llc to purchase it.

@Tim unity, start corp or evwn housing authority programs are not  always the best route.

Corporate and Individual Tax unfriendly state (Aetna, ge, Otis elevator to name a few left this year.

Keep separate accounts for personal and business, and talk with your attorney about an LLC or corporation and the differences in paperwork needed and tax implications for each type of filing.

I have worked in corporate america for over 15yrs and investing in real estate part time since I was making $70K on job...

After two layoffs in the past 4 years, we have decided it is time to leave the corporate world behind and work as independent contractors, and take greater control of our future.

While I'm sure there's risk exposure here that I still don't fully understand, I was comfortable proceeding on that time horizon and for that amount, and eager to learn what I can from it (and especially from talking through it with more experienced folks like you).Also, thank you for clarifying on the "default" terminology, this is somewhat new territory for someone coming from the corporate/venture world!

Form some type of corporation or an LLC with whatever an Attorney and/or a CPA to help you decide will do the best for your goals.Something else you should do is to get a pre-qualification letter that says how long you might need to do a loan and the maximum amount of loan.