So basically you have a property that you are currently living in that you have a HELOC on, and the bank is going to force you to close the HELOC once you convert it to an investment property, and you want to retain access to the ability to take out funds whenever you want without doing a conventional refi - is that right?

At their age they need to place it in a secure conservative income fund.

A "portfolio loan" is a loan which is serviced by the lender who issued the funds (i.e. held in their portfolio), rather than being packaged together with other loans and sold on the secondary market.

We're feeling prompted to take our little business to the next level and shift focus to multi-family.Our ultimate goal in going down the REI path is to fund our daughters' (we have 6 of them!)

We are in that process now, and are heading towards a 30 yr fixed loan because it will be a smaller payment, thus freeing up cash flow to fund deal(s).

Money market, mutual fund, savings?

The issue arises when the lender is not on as a loss payee and the owner takes the funds and runs.

Only cash and certified funds are accepted as payment.

No firsthand experience, but every time I've seen this question come up the responses indicate that for a few small units LLC will not protect you better than simply adding an umbrella policy to your insurance while being more complicated and expensive to maintain.Also many snags to consider such as banks not likely to finance residential property to the name of an LLC, transferring to an LLC later can trigger a due on sale clause in your mortgage, if you mix personal funds and LLC funds to pay for something you can negate all legal protections.

Also, what are some of the things that one could do to perform due diligence before investing in this sort of crowd funding site?