If they are investing with you, you could form a partnership for each deal, where you serve as general partner and control day-to-day operations while your limited partners (investors) provide the capital. 

I know the form hasn't been released yet, but I wrote it into the operating agreement for my LLC and plan to use the form once it comes out.

I think including a preferred return into the operating agreement so as to cash out my colleague first if/when the property eventually sells seems good.

I have a really good attorney who I use in PDX that wont charge you an arm and a legg and scare you into all sorts of unnecessary and complicated asset protection schemes.. basically you can vest in LLC  have an operating agreement ( that's your JV agreement) and a clear cut buy sell agreement .. pretty simple and standard stuff.. feel free to ping me off line..

I exchange/collateralize my income property at current market value for cash to another company called ABCTerms..ABC owns title of the property.Under the operating agreement of ABC I will be asset manager owning 50% cash flow and tiered getting less cash flow year after year.

But if you are hiring a lot of small time operators, they probably don't have a policy.Regarding your flip, you want to double check with your current policy. 

You may even be able to get in touch with a larger lender that operates in your state.

Personally, I think it would work much better as a multi-family co-operative housing situation but that is a whole other yarn to knit. 

So for him and he had a big operation 6 to 10 projects going on at the same time..  

Generally, you cannot help taxes on rental properties by structuring.So you should evaluate it from two other angles:- asset protection which is an attorney's questions- operations, for which is overly complicatedAnd if you "don't have the best accountant" - maybe you should upgrade.