In such scenarios, a commission of 3% is quite standard, typically representing half of the usual 6% total commission allocated to the brokerage.

Here's the thing - he has an option of earning an extra $100,000 next year.

@Logan Turner, From my experience, you can get your homes purchased through the LLC, however, you're usually not going to get a 30 year fixed.Private money will get you 1 to 5 year terms (typically) with simple qualifying and usually interest only between 7% and 12% rates.Portfolio loans will allow you to do a longer term and get better qualifying terms for better borrowers.

If you wanted to rent it out after reno, I can connect you to one of my lenders who does 90% ARV mortgages that have a certain structure to me the first 5 years of the loan really cheap to payout of the rent and have extra money to lower the principle if you can or want.

Official Records dept usually shows in a day or two…the Property Appraiser can be weeks. 

Debt service, room for market rent growth, low vacancies, are usually up there for me5.

Again agreement is important because what happens if you lose money and there is only $3M to distribute.Since you own 50% you get 1.5M and the others split that - or does the first $1M go to you because you contributed the extra million and remaining amount split 3 ways?

Tankless are considered 'green' by some, so have some popularity with that crowd...but like has been said they're usually a PITA.

So, can you afford an extra $1,000 to $2,000 a year to support some out-of-town guru's pipe dream?

You would usually go to Small Claims Court and get a judgement (this is the easy part).