Your first question is one of individual choice - it really depends on your long and short term goals.

Generally it is used for individual agents who want to build a team underneath a brokerage, however the concepts can easily be applied directly to your own firm.  

@Ellis San JoseIn which province is this individual?

@bradley clark, the notes would likely be owned by different lenders, but once the investor acquires them they are split into the individual series.

I love business and I find this industry to be rewarding and challenging.I am currently working with buyers and sellers and have just networked with investors and I am looking to expand my knowledge base and professional network.

Welcome @Daniel GreenOne of the marvelous things about BiggerPockets community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.

Hardly a "tax shelter" or something a sane individual would purposely try to do.

Make sure the individual in the lien is a titled owner.

If you're invested in real estate with cash flow.... the flow keeps coming in regardless of the stock market or any individual companies.Maybe consider a mix of the two???

Newbie military investors (which I still consider myself to be one) really need to understand what may go wrong in real estate because they are in the military such as PCSing (especially shortly after arriving to a new area) and having strategies to deal with it, deployment/surge deployments (also something that us Navy folk call an Individual augmentee or IA), landlording at a distance or landlording in general, and overseeing rehabbing without being able to visit the job site on a regular basis.