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.

The Bay Area market ( south bay particular) is uber competitive.. just having a 5% down is a huge disadvantage to someone.. competing against all cash buyers..

When evaluating properties be sure to make sure they include the basics like: Real Estate Taxes Insurance Gas & Electric Water & Sewage Repairs & Maintenance Unit Turnover Contract Services General & Administrative Payroll & Benefits Marketing & Promotion Legal & Accounting Landscape & Snow Removal Trash Removal Management Fee Reserves for ReplacementsThese items at the very least should be included in any competent underwriting of a property, be it by a broker or the owner directly.  

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. 

I always strife to be a better individual and being successful to be able to take care of my mother and little brother who i have never seen before, both residing in Ghana.

I wanted to ask if anybody knows of a hard money lender that will lend to individuals for 2 rehab projects in the western part of Virginia.

I'm new to the bigger pockets community after only having read one of their books however Im excited to be a part of such a great group of individuals who share my passion for real estate investing.