Any other ideas out there about how to save money related to landlord & tenant service exchanges?

What are some strategies I can use and/or implement to reach retirement strictly off of REI before age 40?

The questions I have relate to the details of the transaction (should the loan amount be the original amount, or the current remaining balance?

Low... is all relative. 

Who told your relatives you could get them 15-20% COC?

Your best best would be to invest in places like Bloomington IL or Champaign where the prices are low and the crime is relatively low.

I'm not an attorney but my understanding is yes, you can definitely do that, and I believe things like that happen every day.While I can see some possibilities for why someone would want to set things up that way, I do have the instinctual thought that it might be over complicating things.Technically the second LLC is another layer of asset protection, and maybe you have a very specific entity structure setup for taxes which would make it beneficial to do it that way (an LLC inside an LLC), but it's worth asking the question of whether these is much difference, or much more protection, than just having you (presumably a Mass. resident) be the member of the RI partnership LLC straight-out rather than having your MA LLC be the member.Also, depending on what else you have going on in your MA LLC it may be a disadvantage to have it be a member of the RI LLC from an asset protection perspective - if someone were to be able to pierce the veil of the RI LLC then everything in your MA LLC would be at risk.If you do go with the MA LLC as a member of the RI LLC, when you go to sell the property you'll have non-resident withholding - but you'd have that if you personally were the member of the RI LLC as well.You'll also need to be careful how you sign anything relating to the RI LLC - you'd have to be careful not to sign as member of the RI LLC but as member of your MA LLC, member of the RI LLC.

My father passed a few years ago and my my mother is aging and she has asked me to help her with a rental property she owns in New York City, Queens to be exact. 

Hey Mike,Thanks for taking the time to respond to my thread.The LLC I plan to form isn't going to be for properties but a separate business not related to properties.

He's a fellow Orlando guy who got started at a young age with a very limited income, but off the charts hustle.