If you can't keep control of your personal finances, you are highly unlikely to succeed in real estate investing.

See what I personally did in my comment below in #2! 

- Loan Type and Liability: Implications of personal vs.

What if one person wants to sell, if one person gets married, when repairs are needed or someone wants to do renos (for cosmetic reasons). 

Plus you can call them when they area bottle deep and ask for some personal referrals!

Just a FYI you don't need an LLC to do RE investing. if you are looking for the checkbook control then yes you will need one, make sure the custodian you choose explains the prohibited transactions and disqualified person list to you. 

The average person can totally achieve financial independence easily with education, self-discipline, and consistency. 

So instead of paying the bank for a home equity line of credit on my first home and paying them interest, I was able to use a personal loan to myself via my employer 403b and pay myself back with interest. 

My personal and professional experience has been that they do not provide actual replacement costs in their evaluations. 

Personally, I like the all-in-one units but they are expensive and poorly suited for larger units where it will take forever to get a load of laundry done (since you can't move the clothes from the washer to the dryer).