It's just for show, as far as these guys are concerned, the money belongs to the rich co-workerSo it all depends on your personal situation.It's funny that the bank made all this fuss during the qualifying stage, but at the closing, they don't check or care to see where the funds came from.

Never late in 5 years, never any major concerns at the property or anything.

There are several legal concerns with your proposed business model which should be reviewed by a local attorney before you begin leasing.

The bigger concern is that between ALL the ways in which they take a bite, their bite was about 20% of the rent. 

I would recommend thinking through what your concerns may be and create a list of questions to ask each property management company you speak with.

I'm happy to invest in improvement, but concerned about fundamental issues with the buildings that may be more difficult to address. 

If I can't find better alternatives I can always swallow my concerns and live with it at least for the first 3-5 years.

It's extremely important to me to be able to see if tenants have submitted their payments, and I don't want to have to keep track on day 6 of who needs a late fee sent much less chase after my tenants for it. 

If your goal is to maximize your retirement plan contributions with a SEP, then keeping things as a basic LLC might be better.If you're really concerned about keeping your brokerage and your personal commissions separate, then two separate entities, possibly either 2 S-Corps or a nested S-Corp/LLC structure might be best.So when tax season is over, sit down with your CPA and outline your goals and your issues and see what they recommend.Now if what you've got is a data entry/"tax preparer" who simply enters your data into tax forms, consider switching providers. 

That said this is extremely area dependent.