I am not familiar with commercial real estate and was hoping I could find someone on here with expertise or some knowledge in the area.  

The lenders push for appraisals right away and the sellers push for a fast closing to try to bully the process and get you to commit a lot of cash fast where you have no leverage once issues are found.You have to slow it down sometimes to protect your interest.

Also as of right now I would be using it to fund fix n flips and hopefully buy n hold but I can't seem to figure out how to structure them to protect all parties involved...I am also wandering about sec rules and how they apply to any of this.

Anyone interested in lending their expertise and potentially more from there? 

If the primary borrower can't pay the mortgage, the noteholder will absolutely protect their own interests and go after the partner regardless of whether or not their name is on the deed.This situation happens all the time in divorce cases where one ex-spouse quitclaims the house to the other but later finds out they can't qualify for a loan because the the mortgage is still under both their names and is killing their DTI.

I own a successful contracting business and I'm looking to use my expertise and experience to purchase and restore some properties.  

That's not my area of expertise but I met a guy at the Phoenix Real Estate Investors Club a few months ago that did that exclusively.

You can make sure that those line items are taken out of the contract so you can protect your end, we have done that for clients but also try to protect ourselves due to unforeseen expenses that come up that need to be taken care of.

That's why I want to do things by the book and want to rely on the expertise of other knowledgeable investors that may have some insight as to this peculiar situation.  

There are many, many types of trusts, each drafted with a given set of objectives: privacy, asset protection, tax avoidance, charitable remainder trusts, generation skipping trusts, beach bum trusts, etc.Also, you need to be very specific as to the taxable events.