We also feel into real estate through my first job out of my graduate program working form a commerical/apartment company as the owners executive assistant and buying/renovating a foreclosure that we turend into a rental. 

I have never gotten a clear answer whether an earnest money deposit is even required to form a legally binding contract.

I have a good friend that wants to do this real estate investing flip strategy with me how do I form a partnership with her?

Should I just place my current properties in my current LLC or form a new one ( I was kind attached to the name hahah)Appreciate your experience and insight!!

I'm reading Ken McElroy's ABCs book right now and he recommends getting on mailing lists for multifamily pro formas so I can practice crunching the numbers down to creating an offer.

You should care about if your money works hard enough for the deal in totality and how defensible the pro forma projects are.

I did make an assumption that the agent was not informed as to the buyers intentI don't see how HUD could ban an investor as I could just form a different LLC.  

For budgeting/pro forma purposes:As the buyer what should I expect to pay in closing costs in Columbus/Central, OH?

Combined, our incomes are over 100k, so we definitely have an advantage there as we look to invest.The plan is that we will form a partnership (of some legal form) so that we can take advantage of both our incomes to scale our business faster, easier, and with potentially less stress and worry (at least financially).

We want to find out more information about their lending structure in order for us to run a pro-forma that way.