Assuming the stairs and decks are structurally sound and safe you have no liability.

To keep the details simple, I acquired 7 acres of land (for an insanely cheap price) with only one structure (a house with tenants who are permanently vacating the property in a few weeks).

Our first intuition was to get an LLC but we no longer thinks it makes sense for the following reasons:- Have to get commercial loans instead of residential, which have much higher interest rates- Have to get homeowners' and umbrella insurance anyway - we feel the risk of being sued while owning rental properties is lower than running other types of businesses if we don't cut corners on the rehab and have a good property manager - Large amount of filing and annual fees requiredAre we thinking about this correctly and is there another structure that would best suit us?

The good news is there are legal structures that can be put in place to eliminate the possibility of losing big in that case, even if insurance won't do the trick.

It's probably for the best to start practicing business structures (even if not required at that point) as the dollar cost of having it is very low

He wins, you not so much.I guess it really just depends on how you structure it and how he gets compensated.Everybody on your team, and your partners in particular, have to be rowing in the same direction, and that means you all (as in all y'all) need to have a financial interest in making sure it gets done on time and on budget. 

My initial hope was to invest in Canada to avoid complicated tax scenarios, but I know members of the BP community have had good success with cross border investing as long as it's structured correctly.I'm looking to work at least 1 more year overseas, but I'd like to start transitioning into investing over the next 12 months if possible to do so from abroad.I'm really excited to enter into this exciting industry, and hopefully work with some of the great real estate minds here on BP!

If you are using all-cash or if a smart realtor know about unique ways to structure an offer; ie escalation clause or something similar, you should be able to beat out the competition.

They will also work to clean up the property remove/tear down the existing shed structures that are unsafe.

So if I have an investor that wants to give me $250k and we can purchase say 4 rental houses with that money how do you structure percentages/payouts?