Also, humanize the transaction by sharing the plight of the seller and explaining to them how they can really make a difference is your best bet!

Would that be safe to assume that Alex Smith is the beneficiary?

They want to park their surplus in a safe place, which has traditionally been US treasuries.

On these transactions, CYA via disclosure after disclosure after disclosure.As Nick stated, you want to pay as little as possible to the seller for the equity position.

Land Trusts: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2009/03/11/land-trusts-asset-protection/ Wholesaling: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2009/03/04/wholesale-transactions-avoiding-dealer-classification/

For example, in Florida, licensed brokerage is considered to be transactional, unless otherwise recorded.

My seller says that in his state, they only use lawyers for real estate transactions.

I use transactional funding.

I would build in a buffer for taxes to play it safe.

Be very careful with this though, if you have shorter term financing like I do prepare for a down turn, I have no idea how much values fluctuate in your market, and if your note need to be renewed in a down market, you better have enough equity, or a pile of cash to bring in, I have seen many investors collapse because they harvested too much equity, I limit my portfolio to 40% LTV, im running about 35% on 21 properties right now, so i feel pretty safe, I was through the last crash and saw some guys i thought had it figured out crash and burn, just a word of warning.